Memory Nguwi

By the time people reach the age of eighteen, most people will have a defined career path.

Such a career path can be by default or well planned. Based on previous research, most people end up in careers that they have not planned for primarily due to circumstances beyond their control.

The majority of career choices are influenced by parents, friends and earning potential. While all these look like plausible factors, the majority of them have misled a lot of people.

Those who have chosen careers based on what their parents want them to do may have ended up in jobs they do not enjoy or have no capacity. I remember five years ago discussing with a young man who was suffering because his parents wanted him to do sciences at A-Level when he had no capacity for the STEM subjects. He told me he had to work extra hard. He had sleepless nights at boarding school reading to please his parents.

When he came to me for a career guidance assessment, his profile showed no capacity for sciences. I told him, and he confessed. I then asked him to bring his parents so that I could also give them feedback. They all came (three of them; mother, father and son). I shared my assessment with the parents. The mother seemed to understand, but the father was offended by my review. He said it was not possible that James(not true name) would be an arts person when they had worked hard for him to be a doctor all along.

I took them through my assessment, and the father walked away. I apologised to the wife and the child, but I told them I was very confident in my assessments. The child had set for O’ levels that time, and they were waiting for results. We had this discussion on Wednesday.

Fortunately, the O Level results were released the same week on Friday. On Saturday morning, the mother called me and indicated that they wanted to have a short meeting with me. I agreed, and we met at 10 am at the office. They started by apologising for the walkout on me on Wednesday. They showed me the child’s results. James had passed with Bs on all non-science subjects and Cs on the sciences.

They then asked me what James should now pursue A’ Level given that the results showed he had strengths in arts. I advised them that he could pursue anything that did not rely on math as a core model for understanding anything. James is now in his third year, and he enjoys what is he is studying.

If you pursue a career because it is paying well now, you will be misleading yourself. At every given time in society, some jobs pay very well based on many factors. The economic and social environment evolves. This tends to affect the demand and supply of skills. No job is in perpetual demand. This, therefore, means that no job will have an earning potential that is constant. That fact alone should discourage you from choosing a career based on money.

When choosing a career, avoid peer pressure. The best factors to use when selecting a career is your capacity (aptitude) and your interest. When the two intersect, you will have a glorious career full of happiness.

In practice, it is always a challenge to have these converge. What tends to happen in most cases is that a person with the right aptitude for a particular career option sometimes lacks the interest and vice versa.

This is why you find a significant number of employees unhappy with their careers. My advice to parents is to have career assessments done early for their children. This will allow parents to invest in the right areas.

Other areas to look at as you navigate your career journey are how long you should stay with an employee and how often you change jobs. My advice is that never remain with the same employer in the same role for more than ten years. On average, aim never to stay in the same position for more than five years.

If you go beyond five years, you are not being promoted enough, and your career is stagnant. It is an indication that you are stagnant, you are not capable enough to be rewarded with a promotion, or you are just working for a bad employer.

Whatever the reason may be, I advise you to move on if you can not be promoted. Remember, in some instances, the only way to get promoted is to change jobs. There is nothing wrong with changing jobs if it benefits your career. I have seen several people regretting why they did not move when they lost a significant amount of career time.

Too much loyalty to an employer can be detrimental. I have heard people saying that if they were to move, they would disappoint their managers. That is a terrible position to put yourself in. After graduating from college/university, you must remember that you must be in a managerial role by reaching seven years of experience.

Anything short of that is failure that you may never recover from. I have noted risk-takers are the people who often progress fast in their careers.
The other way to fast track your career progression is to choose the type of organisation you would like to work for.

I have observed that those who start in well-established organisations (multinationals) tend to progress very fast once they leave the multinationals. This is often based on the belief that those coming from multinationals may have gained from best practices.

However, my experience shows that this is not always the case. Multinationals are good for learning but have minimal innovation space. Those who start in small organisations tend to have higher problem-solving abilities.

When making career choices get the correct advice as wrong decisions can be costly. If you cannot get professional career advice, you may need to research the options available. That way, you minimise your losses.

***Memory Nguwi is an Occupational Psychologist, Data Scientist, Speaker & Managing Consultant- Industrial Psychology Consultants (Pvt) Ltd, a management and human resources consulting firm. https://www.thehumancapitalhub.com email: [email protected]  or visit our website at www.ipcconsultants.com