I read this quote recently that helped me see how I have been living in fear far too much and how a recent change in my life has me overcoming that. I am paraphrasing but the quote was, “It isn’t that you aren’t smart enough or good enough for the role you want, it’s that you are too scared to take the role for yourself”. Take this how you will, but for me this speaks volumes for how I have been handling my career. We have always been told that hard work pays off and to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and things will happen for you etc. But as a “millennial” (I really do not like these generational labels), our generation has seen how this really is not true and seems like just another way of telling us young people to just shut up and accept the world the way it is.
Despite ONLY being 33 years old, I feel like I have gone through most people do their entire lives. My memoir “The Foster Kid – A Success Story” talks more about my personal life and everything that I went through before being thrown into the system, during my time spent in three different foster homes, and even my time after being kicked out at 18, going to college and everything else that has happened since. But I do not talk a lot about my career within the book.
You see, when you are in high school and college there are only so many jobs you can get. For me the only real option was fast food and restaurant work. Some see these as just flipping burgers, but you can learn a lot from working those types of jobs. In working those jobs, it helped give me even more drive to finish college and start what I thought would be an easy transition into adult life with my business degree. When I graduated in 2012, I applied to tons and tons of jobs but was slapped with the reality that in certain economy’s it isn’t as easy to find a job. Especially when employes put out ridiculous requirements like 5 years of experience and an MBA for an entry level position.
While I applied to a lot of jobs, I never actually found one on my own. A neighbor, and friend of my future in-laws, recommended me to her company for an entry level position and luckily, they hired me. This was my first dose of reality that sometimes you have to know people to get ahead or to make things a little easier. Networking is discussed in college, but it is much harder out in the real world. If you are reading this and having trouble in your professional life, find a way to connect with as many professionals you can, that can include friends, family and even strangers on Linked-in etc.
Anyway, as I was saying, I luckily was able to get hired on with this company but being an entry level position, it didn’t pay all that much. Honestly, back then I made less than some people make “flipping burgers” in today’s world. My first job out of college and I was barely making more than I made doing restaurant work. It was demoralizing knowing that I had tens of thousands in student loan debt yet couldn’t find a reasonable paying job with my degree. I mean the company required new employees to have degrees but paid us so little. Despite that, I was just happy being able to work. I took everything as a learning opportunity knowing that this was only the beginning of my journey. I still had that belief that my hard work would pay off in the end.
After a couple years of working for this company, I took on a little more responsibility, but it didn’t come with any extra pay. I was good at what I did but I didn’t know how to ask for more money. An annual raise of 3% back then, but when you only make $12.50 and hour, that 3% isn’t much. After taxes that equated to less than $50 extra A MONTH. I wanted to leave the company but still had trouble finding things on my own, I eventually asked for help from a recruiter at a temp agency that helped with temporary and full-time positions. Being confident in my skill set and ability to work hard was not enough for me to be able to take a leap of faith on a temp to hire position so I had set a stipulation that I would only take full time direct hire roles.
I was afraid that I would take a job, be really good at it, but in the end not getting hired full time. No matter how confident in myself I am, that fear has always been there and in some ways held me back. The fear of failure is hard to overcome but an important one to overcome if you want to take charge of your own life.
With the help of the temp agency, I was able to move to company making a lot more money where I was able to use my skills and college degree. It was my first time trying to take ownership of my career, but I know now that I was still holding myself back. I busted my but in this new role and within six months I was quickly became a trainer for my department. I thought, finally, my hard was paying off. But unfortunately, this feeling only lasted a short while. While I was training all the new people, and taking on special projects, all the actual big promotions kept going to my co-worker. A guy who refused to train people and refused to help when we were forced to work overtime. It took me a long time to realize that no matter how hard I worked in this role, I was never going to gain my deserved promotion. The co-worker was promoted to manager ahead of me and proceeded to then promote his friends ahead of me. I had lost all hope, when I found out that the co-worker was friends with our boss well before coming to work for the company. So, I did all the work while he was getting the credit and promotion all because of who he knew.
I stuck it out in this role way longer than I should have because I kept telling myself my hard work would pay off, when in fact I was in a lose lost position. The harder I worked the more others took the credit for my accomplishment and the more opportunities elsewhere would be taken away from me. I finally had enough and took a role in a different department. Which led me into a career that I never expected. I become an internal auditor without any certifications or real background in audit. I learned a ton and did everything I could to excel at what I did. My hard work finally paid off and I was promoted to manager, but my heart wasn’t fully in audit because it was never a real choice. I didn’t choose to go into audit, I was forced into by having to leave the department I spent years building up.
Then covid hit and working full time while watching a 3-year-old during the day I quickly become burnt out. The world was in an impossible situation, and I was in a job I never fully wanted or committed to. As covid restrictions eventually lifted and the world began to open up again, my hard work and burn out began to slam into each other. I was working hard and even working until 2am some nights to catch up, but I could feel that the hard work was not as appreciated or understood as it should have been. I mean I didn’t have any family that could help during covid, and my wife had a way more important job as a nurse at a local hospital. Feeling unappreciated during such a hard time despite the work I was putting in was disheartening.
I was basically forced to take another role this time outside of the company. The role sounded great as it was a good blend of my work history into one position. The company said I would be eligible for promotion relatively quickly and that there would only be a small amount of travel. I ended up traveling every other week for months on end and it was hard on my family. Then the kicker came where I was told that I would basically have to go back to college and get a second bachelor’s degree to be eligible for my promotion. I was put in another impossible position and again it didn’t have to do with my own choices. I tried to keep going but they told me I was going to be travelling even more. And as I noted in my last blog, my family will always be on the top of my priorities list, so the amount of time away from my kids was just not work it to me. At least not for a role that I didn’t have an impact with.
I lucked out and a recruiter reached out to me from a great company. The role was similar enough to what I was doing and what I had done in the past. After talking with a few people from the company I knew it would be a great place to make a career. The culture was fantastic, and management had a strong vision for the future. I took that role just over a year ago and am glad I did. But one thing I’ve done over the past year was to keep looking at my past jobs and tried to find what truly makes me happy. Looking at myself in the mirror, I found myself asking why I was in each different role and whether I actually chose my career path. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve enjoyed many of my jobs and I really enjoy my current one. But a lot of my career has been sidetracked by other people’s decisions and office politics. Learning new skills and taking on new roles worked well for me, but I started to feel that I lost control of where my career was going. I wanted to choose my next path and not just be pushed into. As I said, I am happy with my current role but looking to the next step I want to choose that step, choose the role, and choose my path. Working hard is a given, I have always done that. But hoping that my work would be noticed and that the right role would open up for me at the right time is wishful thinking.
Throughout my childhood, through high school, foster care and beyond I lost a lot of control within my life. So going forward, I choose to take that control back. I know what I want to do next and while I do not know how it will play out, I am took the first step today. A role opened up at my company and while I may not be perfectly fit for it, I am going to go for it. Now I could have just applied and hoped for the best but that is not the step I chose. I chose to reach out to the hiring manager for the role I want and asked what they were looking for. I shared my interest for the role and a little bit about my work history and background for why I think I am a strong candidate. I know the manager will eventually see my resume and my application but taking the initiative and voicing my interest directly felt like I finally took the control I wanted to take. I was able to find out directly what the manager wanted in the role and came out of the call feeling even more confident it was something I wanted. While I may not have “demanded” the role, I stopped being afraid of what could be and got the ball rolling on my terms. Time will tell if the role works out and how I will do assuming I get the job. But knowing I chose the next step in my path and will continue to do just that is all the motivation I need.
This applies to career choices, but it can apply to other aspects of your life as well. Choose your path, fight for it, and don’t back down. The time for hoping things will come to you and hoping a door will open is over. The time to build your own door, or to kick the door in front of you down is now. Choose your next steps, take it and soon, you just might find yourself running into your destiny.
The Foster Kid - A Success Story 