I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.
Startups are a really cool thing to follow. Seeing how the founders think, execute, strategize— I love to watch their thought pattern. It’s how I learn best.
I have been closely following two startups, both of which I would love to work for just because I am passionate about their products and mission and I really think the founders are people I idolize (in a healthy way of course.)
I was on a call with one of the founders just chatting about projects, ideas, what he’s doing, and what I want to be doing. Of course I have a very very vague idea about what I want to do, but geez I can’t sillo myself the way these big corporations want me to. So he has me run through an exercise:
Look up job descriptions that you like, copy and paste all of them and their salaries (if you can find them) into one sheet.
Then once you have all of the positions copied, sort through and pull out the bullet points that you want to be responsible for.
Read through all of your bullet points and reshuffle/combine where necessary. Spilt your bullet points into two sections: top section will be your role description for right now (aka what you get hired for), the bottom section will be the role you want to grow into.
Look at what role you’ve created, try to give it a title and salary in line (or where you believe it should be) with the market.
This was really helpful for me. Actionable steps to help create my reality. Plus, it gives potential employers an exact idea of what I can and want to do vs. me just vaguely describing it. I then took my afterthoughts of this and did the below, just to tip the iceberg.
Write out what you don't want to do. Socially/career wise... like every facet of your life. I like to use the "framework" of
Health
Wealth
Relationships
Career
Then list out what you do want- this may be more vague than your “don't”s.
I recently read a piece on the benefit of being goal oriented, but also the benefit of knowing what you don’t want. Especially when your wants aren’t super specific. Realizing I don’t want to be at a company with 2,000+ people was huge for me… maybe this will help you too?
Bonne Chance!
