Scenario: My friend, Chen (name changed) is a graduate  from a university, well known for high caliber engineering graduates. He has had over a decade of experience in selling and overseeing engineering projects. He has had an extremely successful track record with his medium sized employer and is compensated at par with current industry standards.

Chen feels that he can keep doing this through his career but is convinced that it is driving him insane and he cannot carry on for long.

Chen has been continuously involved in various community activities ranging from philanthropy to commerce to grass root issue based politics.

Options:

We had a great discussion over lunch and talked about his strengths, his weaknesses, his challenges and his hobbies. We could identify a bunch of skills and sweet spots that one can leverage to shift careers.

Here are some of the options that Chen and I could identify:

1. Explore new opportunities within the company. The current employer has been seeing growth and there may be opportunities within which will provide a wider range of professional exposure and do away with the frustrations of monotony associated with his current role.
2. Given Chen’s ethnic background, one can leverage his ability to interact with Asian culture as easily with American culture. Option to look at Asian companies looking for a professional who can speak both languages and play a key role in sales and business development in the United States.
3. Non-profit organizations are today known to hire high caliber executives with multiple capabilities for roles ranging from community engagement to fund raising. Given Chen’s active community related involvement, he can very easily look at opportunities with non profits that will be very happy to hire a dynamic engineering graduate with such a broad exposure.
4. Chen has also been actively involved with main stream political organizations. He can explore opportunities with key elected officials in DC or in global agencies requiring his multiple skills.

We had merely touched the tip of the iceberg through our lunch and realized that we had opened a Pandora’s box of opportunities and decided to follow through with more opportunities.

If you have suggestions, let me know…

On the lighter side:

The politician was sitting at his campaign headquarters when the phone rang.

He listened intently, and after a moment his face brightened. When he hung up, he immediately phoned his mother to tell her the good news.

"Ma," he shouted, "the results are in. I won the election!"

"Honestly?"

The politician's smiled faded. "Aw, heck, Ma, why bring that up at a time like this?"

"WHAT NEXT" is provided by Ramesh Anand, President, American Personnel Resources LLC. ( www.aprllc.com ) He can be contacted at ramesh@aprllc.com

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