If you can see that certain aspects of your job interest and motivate you more than others, think about ways you can focus on this in the near future.
Do you want to take on more responsibility with mentoring or teaching junior team members new skills? Or perhaps you want to focus on more research and move towards a role that focuses on problem-solving.
Either way, being honest about what kind of work you do is essential when creating your five-year plan.
Do your research
If your career audit has identified that you want to focus on specific areas, start looking at how you can progress in your current company.
It’s also a good idea to look at your employer’s company values and ensure that they align with what your end goal is. For example, if you want to pivot to a role that allows you to make a valuable contribution to environmental causes, does this align with what your company does?
Similarly, if you have strong feelings about AI regulation and your employer is testing the boundaries and automation is infiltrating systems and processes in a way you’re not comfortable with, you might not have a future there.
Dr Geoffrey Hinton, aka the “godfather of AI” quit his role at Google earlier this year because he realised he could no longer support its professional ethics around emerging technologies.
Be realistic
As obvious as it sounds, be realistic about the goals you’re setting for yourself. Climbing Everest sounds impressive but if taking the stairs instead of using the lift to get to your office leaves you breathless, committing to something that is out of reach, figuratively and literally isn’t helpful.
Instead, map out attainable goals and a timeline of how to get them. If progressing to a leadership position is something you aspire to, identify the professional development opportunities you need to avail of to get there.
Similarly, think about the soft skills you need to work on, including leadership and communication—The World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Future of Jobs Report 2023 predicts that analytical thinking is the number one skill for the future, followed by creative thinking and resilience, flexibility and agility.
And if a new job is part of your five-year plan, the Maddyness Job Board is the ideal place to focus your search. It features thousands of tech roles in companies that are actively hiring, including the three below.
Lead Solutions Architect, Dentsu Aegis Network, London
A Solution Architect is required to join the Global Technology Resource and Project Management programme to own the Global solution design for Resource Management and Workflow; with a core focus on the Workfront (SaaS) platform, integrated with core business platform applications, including Dynamics 365, Workday and Salesforce. As such, you’ll engage and coordinate with relevant teams such as our CMX, Media and Creative service lines and Global Technology Platform teams, and identify data integration requirements and drive the development of integrations from conception through to deployment. View additional details here.
Technology Business Analyst, Cloud Infrastructure, Spotify, London
Spotify’s Cloud Financial Management team is hiring a Technology Business Analyst to maximise business value by helping engineering, finance, technology, and procurement teams collaborate to make data-driven product decisions. In this role you will be responsible for hands-on financial planning and reporting, supporting streaming delivery and development across public clouds, content delivery, authentication, and supporting SaaS, as well as large language models. You will also create accurate data and insights supporting engineering, finance, procurement, and external partners, enabling decisions by framing cloud costs with tailored context. See the full job description here.
Associate Technology Specialist, IBM, Manchester
Are you a recent graduate passionate about tech and looking to kick-start your career? As part of the Graduate Associate programme, the Associate Technology Specialist will complete a training plan incorporating blended e-learning, virtual classroom, and practical learning approach in IBM technologies. Whether you are looking to work in DevOps, software engineering, testing, cloud infrastructure, your technical training will be matched to support you in your first assignment which may include designing, developing and testing a new, modern cloud-native application or support a legacy application, with code management, troubleshooting and tuning. Alternatively, you may work on translating software requirements into working and maintainable solutions within new or existing application frameworks. Interested? Find out more here.
Future proof your career path today via the Maddyness Job Board.