Title says it all, what made you decide what you wanted to do? Mine just kind of happened upon me and developed from there. This was due to a last minute move and a very quick job search followed by another and then another and having to secure a job within a week each time. (I did this) Looking back I wonder if things would have been different had I not taken that first job. Let me know how you all feel about this!
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Discovering and playing into strengths as I went (go?).
The only way to figure out what your strengths are is by doing unfortunately.
Understanding what my passion is and what drives me as an individual.
There are a lot of entities (business schools, especially) that push people to define their careers in a "grand design" narrative. "I knew I wanted to end up doing Z, so I went to school and majored in A, and then got experience working in B, and followed that up with..."
Problem is, for most people I know, it's horseshit. Most of us go through some series of negative feedback loops until we end up doing something that doesn't suck, or ideally, that we enjoy. Dovetailing with what @m_1" mentioned above, most people enjoy things they're good at (and become good at things they enjoy), so there's a meaningful relationship between the two.
I'm not doing anything even remotely related to the "field" I chose when I was in school. I've tried a lot of things, performed as well as I could, taken notes on what I liked and what I didn't, and then used what I've learned to repeat the process in a new role.
I suspect this evolution continues indefinitely. The way I value and balance different variables (developing my own skill set vs. training others and passing on what I've learned, thinking independently on a topic vs. guiding a team to solve problems, grinding away on nights & weekends vs. spending time with my family, building wealth vs. deciding on a "number") has changed, and as those change so does my evaluation of different roles.
I guess the short answer is that deciding on a field for me has been an exercise in random walk, governed by my evolving life priorities. Couldn't be farther from a grand plan I laid out early in my career.
Thank you for the reply. I was just asking because, though I am good at what I do it does not really interest me or is challenging enough but I also am not in the place to work the crazy long hours of an IB either. (gone soft with the 40 hour weeks) So while I am good at it, it no longer interests me and did not really give great transferrable skills to transition without taking a step down.
I like science and want to help people. I wanted to interact with a wide range of people too.
Career transitions happen. They’re not smooth so not advocated much on this forum. Most people think MBA is the only route to go to switch from finance to some different form of finance.
There was a guy who was a former Navy SEAL, med school grad, turned astronaut. You can do whatever you want. It may take time and mean pay cuts, but definitely possible in a broad sense.
I know you can’t go bartender -> KKR without something in between, but if you remove so much limitations it’s possible to get into some form of anything.
For me, I kinda of stumbled into Business before focusing on Finance, I changed my major multiples times until I took an intro to Finance Course that captured my interest. A big part of it was the ability to spin a story on the fly (no matter how well informed you were) about the numbers and markets (or in Biggie's words: "Spit yo game, talk your sh.."). My first internship actually introduced me to the field of IB which I had to learn through WSO, M&I and networking.
I did not think I would be in M&A all these years later, but I genuinely do like working on deals and managing a process (which I can do from both a sell-side and buy-side prospective). It has been quite the journey, but I'm pretty satisfied so far with the direction of my career.
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