In the first two years of joining M&M Financial Services company, Fred, twenty-four, still feels unsure where his career is headed.

Post-training school, he started out with the Audit and Investigation Unit, and it appeared he was heading for an Auditor’s future. However, six months later, he was “temporarily” posted to HR to cover for a manpower gap. Weeks became months, and he was already seeing a future in HR.

Today, after eighteen months in two different HR roles, he was invited to have a chat with the Financial Reporting department for a possible move to the Unit. At this point, Fred is confused. “What is my career direction?” He asked himself as he walked out of Mr. Manny’s Office, the Head of Financial Reporting. “Where am I heading with all these experiences?” “What will all these amount to in the later phase of my working life?” Fred kept asking himself.

You see, Fred is not alone in this seemingly confusing career journey. A lot of us have asked similar questions about our work before; “should I insist on a linear path, or go along with all the deployment and redeployment opportunities?”

Caroline Castrillon, in her Forbes article, What to when you lack Career Direction, published in March 2020, admonished that “Careers are no longer linear”. In today’s world where jobs are more fluid than ever, it is not unlikely that our journeys are no longer respecting the laws of linearity. Today’s typical job roles combine the experience of multiple responsibilities.

If you see yourself in Fred’s shoes, two things that can help you stay purposeful and inspired are as follows:

Professionalize your path

Roles change from time to time as far as you are hitting the mark in your work. However, you can keep things sane by building around a specific professional profile. For instance, Fred, in our story, moved from Audit to HR to Financial Reporting, and though we can describe the movement as scattered, it could be ordered around Auditing as a profession. In the broad field of auditing, personnel auditing is a niche, as is financial auditing. So, if Fred begins to build his professional profile as an Auditor, all the experiences align neatly.

Construct a Career Pyramid

Most ideal careers have been shown to resemble a pyramid; broad, multiple roles at the base and early years, and narrow and specific roles at the top and later years of the career. This career path is often more enriching and deeply impactful, since you already have a broad experience across roles, before specializing. In fact, most leadership and management development programmes mirror this path; training candidates across multiple roles over a period of time, before focusing them on a more defined path.

Lastly, Be Happy

Doing a good job should ultimately be your goal. Ensuring that whatever path you follow, whatever role you are deployed to, and wherever you find yourself, doing a good job, and leaving a great impact should be your objective. Doing this all the time will make your career path clearer as you go along the way.

Cheers my friend.