My Career Day Experience at SEEK
Friday, April 1st was not a normal workday for us at work. It was my first (I think it’s not the company’s first) experience of getting in touch with various leaders, having an open career chat with our colleagues, do our own learning in a single day. Although usually at SEEK, we are usually given ample opportunities to work on our career plan on our own, this time the Career Development Day was given as a dedicated day just for that purpose. All project meetings are canceled just for that so you can work on your career goals!
The Engineering, Product, UX, and Analytics Career Development Day is a two-day event that is done both virtually and physically across Asia and ANZ offices.
The Career Day was kick-off with sponsored lunch and Career Talk by the Product, UX, Analytics, and Engineering leaders on the 31st of March.
On the event day, we were spoiled by a variety of leaders who hold open office hours where anyone (yup anyone) can schedule a quick 15-30 mins one-to-one session to discuss career, mentorship opportunities, ask hard questions etc. There is no limitation to how many leaders you are meeting on that day too.
SO, EVERYBODY, yup everybody in the team can participate and speak to anyone who they think can help give them information to support their career plan or they can also be the support for others’ career plans too.
Like everyone else that I know at work, I was excited for the day too! Here’s a snapshot of my reflection and takeaways from the Career Development Day :
Encourage and motivate us to be responsible for our own career path
If you are puzzled each time you hear the “Own Your Career Path” tagline in any career talk and thought “How the heck am I supposed to know how to do it?”, that makes the two of us!
When I sat down on Friday morning to journal my thoughts about my experiences, my current role, about my interests, reassessed my achievements by far and looked at potential options that I have to craft what my career journey will look like next ~~ I never felt more empowered to take my career growth more seriously.
A conversation like this with colleagues and leaders motivates me to explore what are the options that I have and can make.
Work experience can help discover a passion
Not everyone finds deciding on a career and to plan for it to be an easy decision to make, even for someone who is in the mid-30s like me! Although at work, I use Gallup to define my strengths and Value cards to define my values; I still find it rather difficult to identify what job I am really good at and what kind of career best suited me.
All the career chat and input that I get from the talk that day, it helps me to measure my perception against my collective experience throughout my working life.
All of the experiences that I have gained, taught me to know the kind of work that I enjoy and don't enjoy doing.
This to me is powerful information in order to shape the life that I want and chase after the kind of work or role that I am passionate about.
It also makes it easy for the potential mentor I speak to, so he/she can help me navigate my next move for my career and advise the learning plan that best suited my goal too.
An opportunity for us to network with team members | Leverage and learn from others
Being an introvert has its own challenge as much as people like us have no issue working from home or being given a solo contributor role.
But then again, in working life and career, having a good relationship with others can actually better your network, and the more opportunities you can learn from others. Connecting to others during Career Day can help expedite your learning by leveraging their success story as a powerful insight to guide the career journey that you want rather than trying to do and experience it alone.
Stepping out of my comfort zone
The Career Day has inspired me to step out of my comfort zone. When attending a sharing about “Public Speaking” on that day, we were all connected to hundreds more colleagues who struggle with speaking in a crowd or with unfamiliar faces in general.
Not only we were discussing common struggles but the session has enabled us to connect to a community that has common learning interests. You never met them before but they have a common learning curve as you. How cool is that!?
The session has encouraged me to brave myself to find public speaking opportunities within and outside the workspace to start practicing as part of my communication improvement.
Planning doesn’t have to be BIG, we can also think SMALL
Many of us think that when it comes to being serious about our career, we just have got to be planning BIG.
Yeah sure, this could happen! It is not impossible.
However, if you’ve been on my blog space for a while now, you know that I am also a supporter of SMALL steps. We can think BIG and we can also think SMALL.
Let’s be real. Although planning is a skill of an organized mind, it is not guaranteed that all things you plan can happen exactly as how you want them to be. There are always risks, life can happen and it will. When it does, it is something that is out of our control. But without planning, you are just preparing yourself to fail either. So it's better to have a small plan than not having it at all.
For someone who is new to venturing into career planning, it can be daunting but you can also start small. All you got to do is to start reflecting if the current role that you are in is something that you truly enjoy doing and if you can imagine yourself being in a higher position in that role.
Jot down your thoughts about this and you can then use this to have a conversation with your colleagues, manager, or consider finding a coach within your organization.
Having a Career Development Day like this is really a good opportunity to start somewhere rather than not having a plan at all.
Make career planning a regular event
This event makes me realize that career planning is not a one-time thing! Yup, you heard me.
We don’t have to wait for the organization to provide the time to us, but we can always find time to plan for our careers.
I think this planning process if done more often will then enable us to have more productive career conversations with others to either ask for support or be the support to help others elevate.
I am thinking of a time every midyear (June) and the end of the year (Dec) to do a check-in for my career.
Plan your day
Making time to plan is one thing but knowing how to plan is another important element in bringing this kind of day a success.
I felt a little underprepared and was a bit candid with the agenda for the day.
Perhaps, it is my first time attending such an event, I thought I would have enough time to spend and do stuff. Felt a bit of guilt for not being prepared beforehand given that the notice was out at least a week before.
I think I have missed the opportunity to slot times with more leaders who actually hold open office hours for a 1-1 chat. Anyone won’t easily have their attention to talk about this on any other business day.
Although I managed to get an overview of the next step that I needed to do in the next 3-6 months, I just felt I could have done this better.
Here’s what I think I can make use of the Career Day in the future :
Spare the time to decide what do I want to achieve from the day (ie. just as a reflection day, planning day, networking, etc)
Skim through the event agenda in advance and decide which of the session that I want to participate
Prepare conversation points and questions that I want to ask the leaders I am meeting with
Schedule and block the time with people I want to meet and things I want to do
Although this event is optional I highly encouraged anyone to participate and make it a valuable day. Even if you are unable to have clarity on your future plan but you will realize that a minute spent reflecting on your career could add value to your perspective. We spent so much time sulking over jobs we hate to do (guilty as charged!) and spend the whole time venting out about how others are being promoted (staying away from such toxicity!). I learned that such energy is best spent focusing on you and hacking your career.
