I talk to a lot of marketing students eager to get into the workforce. Most have a very specific plan for what they want to do. I admire that, because I was the same as a student.
But as I look back on the winding path of my career so far, I’m reminded that rarely are our long term plans a straight shot destination. And a lot of the detours I ended up taking in my career made me better for it. Some, like my shift over to marketing automation, totally changed my career trajectory.
So my advice to students with a specific plan for what they want to achieve in their career – keep that plan in mind for the long term. But keep things flexible in the short term. Explore and say yes to the detours early on – it may seem frustrating to depart from the course you set ahead of time, but most of the time, you can find your way back to the original path later. The value of staying flexible to early opportunities is you get to explore scenarios you may never have considered. You get to build additional skills, which, while they may not be apparently valuable to the career dream you originally had, will help give you a unique mix of skills that if anything, makes you more valuable in future roles.
As a hiring manager, some of the most interesting and valuable candidates I’ve hired have been those who’ve had an unconventional path, and possess skills unlike the average applicant who checks all the boxes, and nothing more.