Hi Everyone,
You know when you read stories of people on the internet who tell you where they started from and how landing a specific kind of job increased their salary by 10x? You often wonder if there's any truth to those stories and if there are indeed opportunities out there that can signify a significant leap in your career. The truth is that you can have a career that constantly presents you with hops of opportunities. These careers can be called high-growth careers. I'm talking specifically about the groups of people who make experiential leaps in their careers by seeking out new experiences or making bigger leaps in the early part of their careers. My career has been a combination of both - starting out with a job that paid next to nothing eight years ago and being able to 100x that currently. Yes, some start out in highly skilled and specialist roles like surgeons and start earning high salaries right after their residences. But today, we're focused on those whose first and entry-level jobs were less than stellar and did not qualify as highly skilled or specialist roles.
How do you recognise a high-growth career?
An easy way to check if you've had a high-growth career is to take stock of the wealth you've built (or simply how much more you've earned annually). Is your career responsible for changing your earnings or moving you from one socio-economic class to the next? The answer has to be YES if it's the case.
You've taken up opportunities that stretch you and teach you new skills, either while performing on the job or in formal or informal learning required for the job.
You have work experience that has created a track record for you, ultimately contributing to your growth as a subject matter expert or leader in your field.
Your career growth is achieved through seeking new experiences, entering new roles, and formal learning through certifications and educational programs.
You might wonder why you need to have a high-growth career, but here are some of the values:
According to McKinsey, moving into a new role or landing a "new position that stretches one's capabilities or represents a match that better utilises one's skills" leads to increased earnings. In other words, a high-growth career is a path to financial freedom and stability (with sound financial management, and other money-related skills, of course).
A high-growth career can also be demanding but leads to introspection and a lot of self-reflection about our interpersonal and hard skills and, ultimately, our lives. I wrote about the demands of work in this archived newsletter.
As an expatriate living and settling in a country different from my home country for work, people see my skin colour and automatically call me an immigrant. But, to be honest, as part of my high-growth career strategy, economic/knowledge migration was considered an opportunity to contribute my skills to the international job market, not just as validation for my hard work but to find better living, working and economic conditions for my family. Therefore, I don't care about the labels of migration. Still, a high-growth career offers the value of migration and contributes to career success even as a migrant with half the locals' opportunities.
Exposure to many other cultures is a great benefit when you become an expatriate at any point in your high-growth career. Not only do expats experience this benefit, but those who work remotely for international remote companies, those who occasionally travel for work and those who work for multinationals that require visits to other local offices also experience it too. You develop cultural intelligence on different business matters and other cultural communication skills that improve your profile in your field.
Thinking about how to achieve or build a high-growth career? I would like you to stay tuned for my following newsletter. :)
xoxo.
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