Career Advice: The Beginner's Dilemma
Can’t get job because no experience…can’t get experience because no job
So you want to step out of your first role into a more specialised area, and are wrestling with this most difficult of dilemmas? Here are some thoughts.
Caveat: Not all advice is relevant to everyone, you need to apply it to your own situation. Take what works for you & discard the rest.
Recommendation 1: Focus on the skill not the money.
Especially when you are at the start of your career, it is easy to focus on the money: “I need to earn 80k so I don’t need to live with my parents anymore”. That’s fine but the way to earn 80k (/100k/120k/etc) is to get good at something that someone will pay you 80k for. You should also get better at negotiating, but with limited skills & experience this will only take you so far, and most organisations have a fixed pay range for a given role.
Start by deciding the types of work you think you want to do (selling? researching? design? analysis?) or the parts of the organisation you want to work in (marketing? risk? products? technology?) and then proceed to recommendation 2.
Common Mistake #1: I am enthusiastic for anything that will pay me more than I earn now.
Why do you want to be a product manager? You say that you are really enthusiastic and…ah…yes…you want the job because it pays 90k. This is the wrong way to go about it. People will take a chance on enthusiasm and interest, but it is hard to take that chance for someone who is focused on money. Pursuing a higher salary is healthy and necessary - believe me, we get it. The question is why would someone bet their credibility by helping you get a role if they don’t know if you will like or be good at it, when the main thing driving your interest is the salary, and you’re interested in any job at that pay level?
Which leads us to our next suggestion.
Recommendation 2: Demonstrate genuine interest.
You say that you are really interested in data and data analysis but spend none of your time doing that in your current work, have never done a free data course and the last time you opened a spreadsheet was in high school? This is…not very convincing.
If the goal is to convince an employer to take a chance on energy & enthusiasm because you will learn the rest, you have stumbled at the first hurdle. If you are already spending your own time analysing data and dreaming about analysing data, have a lot of curiosity, and the only thing missing is a role for you to do that full time? It is way easier to give this candidate a chance.
Common Mistake #2: “I need to find what I am good at before I spend time on it.”
Not true. Learning is a feedback loop process. You learn to enjoy what you get paid to do. “Paid” here includes nonmonetary rewards - recognition & other success, satisfaction. As you work you will find that you enjoy parts of it - lean into these; it is a signal from the universe.
The best advice is from former Westpac CEO David Morgan - “Why Doing What You Love Is Bad Advice”. His advice is: Find something that you like and that someone will pay you to do. He is correct – do this.
Do some work and show someone. Help other people to recognise your genuine interest, because it will make it easier for you to get that role you want. The world of employment is not a fixed place - the actions you take have ripples. People will notice your interest and come to you for things, and this opens the door to get deliverables/experience – see Recommendation 3, below.
Common Mistake #2.1: “My career is a big choice so it’s really important I get it right before I decide.”
This is nonsense; it is a lie that we tell ourselves. It takes a few weeks to get good enough at most areas to get your first role in that field. You can learn how to send an email campaign or write an SQL query in a few days. There are free courses for everything. Many people by mid-career will often be able to perform at an entry level in 3-4 roles if not 7 or 8. The longer you work in any field, the wider range of skills you will use & acquire. Don’t fixate on this decision. Pick an area - use salary as a guide if you must - *decide* to be interested in it and try free courses and online learning.
It’ll become obvious very quickly if you hate the subject matter. You don’t need to know what your passion or dream job is to make progress. Pick something, *start*, and use your time to narrow down the list of possibilities.
Recommendation 3: Have a deliverable.
If you’ve followed the recommendations so far, you have now decided which area of work you are interested in. You have talked to people about your passion and have some evidence of your genuine interest. Perhaps you have done a marketing course or two and taught yourself the basics of conversion funnels.
Now you should get a deliverable under your belt. Enthusiasm on its own is not enough. Most companies suck at training and underinvest in it. This means that, much of the time, employers can’t hire someone that can’t do the job, because the company isn’t able to teach the role from scratch.
This means that - what you are trying to do is close the perception gap so that it becomes clear that you can do the job. Enthusiasm helps - but doing the work is better.
Find a small project that can contribute a useful unit of work. Analyse inbound call volumes to find the busiest time of the week. Write a case study or a pitch deck or some other communication. Learn to send a bulk email or review a PDS. Run a small project where you are accountable for getting something reviewed & signed off. Get that under your belt and collect feedback from someone doing that role currently on how they would have done it differently. Measure the outcome if possible. Write down a description of what you did & the result, so that you can describe it to a prospective employer in great detail later.
Congratulations, you have now done the job of [Job You Are Applying For]. Combined with your demonstrated interest, you are now significantly closer to landing your first gig. While you can’t control the timing of roles becoming available, in my view the above is probably enough to close 60-70% of the gap to getting the role, which means you have significantly increased your chances from 0. More experience will close the gap further.
Common Mistake #3: I need to demonstrate my ability to deliver outcomes
This is only sort of true and is an area where it is easy to get confused because common career advice is to focus on outcomes - & this is good advice. However, someone hiring a first-time product manager, or marketer, or data analyst etc is not looking for someone who can drive massive outcomes. What they want is someone who can own an area or task/s, be a positive influence on the team (attitude, energy) and do the job reasonably well.
Imagine that you are hiring a new person into their first data analyst role. They have never done the role before but have enthusiasm. Do you want someone with big dreams of how to revolutionise our data analysis capabilities, or do you want someone that knows how to use an Excel spreadsheet and can learn to deliver basic insights and visuals? The second candidate is typically who gets hired.
When you are trying to move into a new work stream, focus on showing your ability to do the job. i.e. Can you complete common tasks, on time, with adequate quality, minimal fucking around and can you learn to get better over time? Do you have to be told to do something or will you proactively approach your manager when you have nothing to do?
However, if you are trying to, for example, present yourself as being able to produce big marketing outcomes at the same time as you are trying to get your very first marketing job, you are confusing the pitch and will either miss the mark, or oversell yourself. The reality is if the organisation wanted an amazing marketer who could drive millions of dollars in value, they wouldn’t be hiring a first-timer, and that role is worth a lot more than 80k anyway.
Focus on the ability to do the job. Once you know how to do the thing, then you can learn to drive big impact. That’s where even higher pay comes from.
Recommendation #4: Build relationships with people who can help you
Everyone talks about “networking” for good reason. Find people who will believe in you, can recognise your potential, and are willing to spend time with you providing guidance, feedback, or helping clarify your thinking. This includes your boss who should be the first person that you talk to & will (should!) often advocate for you in other parts of the organisation if opportunities come up in your area of interest.
This is more common than you’d think; almost everyone receives a hand-up in one way or another and many (not all!) people are self-aware enough to recognise it and pay it forwards.
Often, it’s as easy as asking someone for advice. People love to talk about themselves, what they are working on, & their experiences. A good mentor can help you understand which learnings are valuable, and what might be good tasks to stretch yourself or help close gaps in your knowledge.
Most of the day-to-day tasks in most roles can be learned by anybody. Bank capital requirements are complicated but at the end of the day all you are doing is addition & multiplication and moving numbers from one place to another place. Big chunks of the value in a role come from, among other things, learning how to think about the work (e.g. approaches & frameworks, edge cases, trade-offs), how to do things in the right way, know which outcomes are good, and provide expert input. Here, mentors are invaluable.
Common mistake #4: Will you be my mentor?
You should rarely or never ask this question, at least not to someone that you don’t know really well. The typical mentoring relationship is informal and the “will you be my mentor” question sounds a lot like an open-ended commitment while also being the kind of pointed question that is difficult to say no to. I.e., you have put someone on the spot by asking for an unquantifiable future effort & ongoing tax on their time, with nothing in return. Just don’t. Approach the matter indirectly e.g. by asking people for input or advice.
An alternative approach is - do some work on your own first. Don’t ask people for input (effort on their part) unless you have put in some effort of your own first. Asking people to spend effort on you when you aren’t spending any of your own is a losing game. *Make something* and then share it and ask for their input.
The people you will want to learn from are busy, and mentoring is a lot more pleasant when the effort required is minimal & ad hoc. If you ask for a larger commitment, e.g. “can you teach me [specific thing]” make it quantifiable and closed ended so that your ask is clear & the person can make an informed decision about whether to commit.
That said, if someone offers to spend more time helping you, certainly feel free to take them up on it!
Common mistake #4.1: Just do your job
Many times, people are told that if you put your head down and work hard, good things will happen. This is bad advice, and you should approximately never* listen to it. (*rare exception: unless it is accompanied by specific, verifiable information e.g. “in the new year, a new role will be opening up that we would like you to apply for”)
Later, once you have built credibility & some success, opportunities may occasionally “just happen” for you because you have built a reputation in your field. This is not the norm & it is not where you are at right now, so you need to focus on moving intentfully towards what you want. Have a specific end-state in mind, e.g. “I want to work in [role] or [area]” and have a plan for learning what you need to get there.
A good mentor may recognise your skill set and help steer you towards the right opportunities. Often finding opportunity is about being in the right place at the right time. Most if not all successful people also got lucky; they worked hard and then had a lucky opportunity which they were able to capitalise on. It is not inspiring but it is the truth, and the odds are that your career will be the same.
Good things will happen for you if you work hard and learn a lot, but you also need to share your aims and ideas with trustworthy people.
I hope that helps you on your journey.
Minion