Hey, everyone, hopefully you're having a wonderful week, it is a
beautiful day here in the DC area. So no complaints here. For
those who don't know, me, my name is Shevonne. And I talk
about productivity time management organization. And I
am a program manager at an IT consulting company. So I do talk
a lot about leadership, and just management in general. So, I
have been thinking a lot about just career changes have been
seeing a lot of questions about it. I've been dealing with my
young adults, they're at the age where they're thinking about
what they want to do with their future. So thinking about that,
and as well as just thinking about when I was younger, the
careers that I wanted to have. One of them was I wanted to be
an interior designer. Then I wanted to be a computer
developer, I wanted to work for a video game company, because I
love video games. And so I really started thinking about
just career change in general, one thing I will say is, it is
never too late to make a career change. Yes, it's much easier to
do it when you're young, don't have any kids don't have any
bills. And you're able to just go and try this and try that.
And that is what I try to tell the young adults in my life
experiment. Try this job, try that job. And eventually you
will figure out what you want to do. That is what I did. Like I
been working since I was 15 majority of the jobs that I had
I hated. But I did it, I done telemarketing. I worked as in a
call center. I'm actually for various different companies in
different industries, like the security company. Mainly I've
been in the IT field. I worked as a system administrator, help
desk, technical writer, this is analyst and then I dealt into
project management. And now I'm a program manager. And hopefully
one day, you know, if I don't decide to do something else, one
day, maybe I'll be an executive. But what I'm trying to say is, I
have been in many jobs, I've worked nights, I've worked
weekends, I've worked day time. And I decided through all those
jobs, what I loved, and that helped me understand what type
of jobs I would want to take. That's the first thing that I
would say, especially if you're young and don't have any
responsibilities. Just try anything. If you are working in
a career field already, you can always volunteer. And that is
what I did as well. I did a lot of grants for smaller
nonprofits, I did proposals, and I even did resumes. I have done
a lot as you could tell, but it helped me realize that so I
think that is something that you should do. Try working nights,
try working weekends, try working during the day, try
working different hours and see what actually appeals to you.
For me, I realized, I like working daytime. I don't like
working nights and weekends. Yes, I do that for my side
hustle. I work nights and weekends. But that is a passion
that I have for a just a full time job that isn't really
something that I'm like 100% passionate about. Daytime is
good for me. And then I can clock out and focus on what I
want to focus on my family, my side hustle, my dog, eating out
whatever, I can do that. But there are other people my son
has said that he prefers working nights. So then that is
something that he probably would want to look at professions that
are mainly working odd hours or working more in the evenings and
nights. The other thing I realized was I don't really like
working in business to consumer type of model companies. Like I
don't like working retail. I hated working when I was working
at McDonald's. I hated working fast food. I had one person Oh
my god. This happened when I was 16. And I still remember he
was upset about some stupid thing and then he had the nerve
to tell me that that is why I'm working on McDonald's. I make
more money than you and oh wow. That pissed me off so much.
Wanted to flip some tables, put some Vaseline on my face, take
the earrings off, but it made me realize I don't want to do that.
It is for me the way Pay, some people treat retail workers,
people in the food industry is just disgusting. And I don't
have the patience for that. So I knew that that those were fields
I did not want to go into, because I probably would end up
in court if I continue working in those positions because I
wouldn't tolerate the crap. So I knew that I couldn't do that. I
love working b2b, which is business to business for people.
I like working for more professional type people, people
that have a certain career path, or they're thinking of
transitioning, but they're a little bit more educated and
won't go and treat people like crap, which is not something
that I just can't do. So I knew that that is what I wanted to
do. I love technology. So I knew that I definitely wanted to work
in the IT field, I love working on different solutions trying to
understand a client's needs. And that was something that I want
to do. So you got to think about that. Do I want to work with
everyday consumers? Do I want to work more business? Write down
what your ideal customer would be. And think about what type of
careers tailor to those customers, because those are the
people you're going to be working with. Majority of the
time, so you don't want to be working with people that will
piss you off. The other thing that I realized was, I wanted to
have flexibility, I did not want to have to sit there and have to
get out of bed and have to go into an office Yes, in during
the early ages. You know, I've been working since the 90s. We
didn't have the technology that we have now. But I knew that it
would be the first industry that would go to working from home
more flexibility. So that was something that was very
important to me. I probably if after I had my kids, I didn't
even want to work I'll be I'll be honest with you, I wanted to
stay home with them. So for me, I wanted to be in an industry
where I would have that flexibility to be able to have a
full time career because I needed that as a single parent,
and be able to be there for my kids. The other thing too, was
that the other thing that I really thought about was I don't
want to be in a career where it's just constantly working.
That was not something that I wanted to do. I wanted to be in
a career where if I had to take off to go to a doctor's
appointment, I could do that without having to take PTO. That
was something that was very, I remember, there were some
companies in my early work days that would do that. You could
even take an hour off without the mean like, well make sure
you take PTO. It's it was it was ridiculous. So I knew that I
wanted to have a lot of vacation time. That was something that
was very important to me as well. I wanted to be in an
industry and a career that would continue, I would continue to
grow. And even though I do think that when you're in a management
position, a project manager can be you can work for any
industry. I feel that even if you if that is true, and let's
say you're working on a specific project, you want to understand
the technologies like right now a lot of the projects that I'm
on are Azure specific. So I'm working on cloud technologies.
So I got my Azure fundamental certification, and I just
decided that I want to get the Azure administrator
certification as well, for those who are working with Azure.
That's the AZ dash 104. So I want to do that because now
we're starting to talk about more innovative technologies and
more in depth. And I want to understand what my architects
and my cloud engineers talking about and not, but just be
sitting there just shaking my head and not noticing what the
hell they're doing. So for me, it's important to continue to
grow in that way.
But I will say that
mainly for the younger generation, or even people who
are thinking of transitioning careers, it's never too late.
And I want to say that, especially for people who are
more Late Starters. I'll be honest, my son is one of them. I
am not seeing any motivation to find a career path. He's almost
21 And it's frustrating to me as parents But I also and I keep
telling him that just explore and try to really think about
what you want to do go on YouTube, Google, go on social
media and see what people are posting having to do with the
career paths that you're interested in. It's never too
late to change careers, or just start one. But you have to be
someone who's motivated to do that. You don't want to sit
there and wake up at 30 years old, sleeping in your parents
basement, and then wondering why you can't get a date with a
quality person. So I will say that you should never feel like
it's too late. You can always change careers, talk to people
who have done it. Talk to people who are in the professions
you're interested in. If you're in a bigger company, start
shadowing the departments that you're interested in, see how
people see what type of credentials people have, what
type of certifications, what schooling or just what type of
experience they have. As I said before, volunteering, that is a
great way to stay in your current career path. So you can
get paid, but then you also start doing the work for the
career that you want to transition to. So that is a lot
of the ways that I did that. Because when I started, I was
doing a lot of help desk, I was doing a lot of system
administrator, administrative, I guess you could say type of
work. And I wanted to be a writer, a technical writer. So I
started volunteering. And as I said, I worked with a bunch of
smaller nonprofits. And that helped me tremendously get that
experience, be able to put it on my resume, and be able to
eventually become a technical writer, which was very important
to me back then. And you, you should consider that just start
volunteering. And I think not sure if it's everywhere, but I
feel like it is Volunteer Match calm, you can go on there and
start just volunteering, especially for smaller
nonprofits who can't afford a bibble in house team to do all
the work or even they can't afford a bunch of freelancers to
do the work, volunteer work pro bono and get the experience that
way. But that's mainly what I wanted to talk about is the fact
that really think about what kind of career you want. It is
never too late to make those changes. But you can't sit idle
and expect for it to happen to you. You have to make it happen.
But I would love to hear what you have to say please connect
with me on Instagram. As I said, I post a bunch of like different
stats, different type of motivational type of pose. And
so I would love to connect with you on there. But I will talk to
you soon and hope you have a wonderful weekend. Bye