Why Find your Career fit, when you can Create it?

Susie Train TravelI am always the person at every networking event who is incredibly intrigued at the career path of other attendees.  Whose career path was linear? Marketing major or MBA?  Grad school or life experience? Who started out in fine art and ended up in finance? (I have heard all the stories.) They intrigue me so much because, like many, my path was as far from a linear career path as I could take.

I went from fine arts, to social media, to serving as a content manager at an arts nonprofit, to managing digital needs and social media trainings at a large nonprofit (while managing a touring youth theatre company on the side). Then I was hired on at Dell, first as a global social media manager and recently, as the manager of an in-house creative content studio.

When I took the big step to move from my known world of non-profit entities into a career in the corporate world, I entered with a bit of hesitancy. How would working in the world of arts & education differ from the world of high-tech? I had never considered myself a STEM girl, but could I be? Moreover, what would the leap from non-profit to the corporate world feel like; could it fit me, my career goals and my lifestyle? 

Here’s some things I learned along the way that have helped me make the most of my career in the corporate world:

1. Know (and share) your strengths

Likely the first question I ask anyone in a working environment is for their Myers- Briggs results. I am a proud ENFJ.  Learning my strengths and how to magnify them versus focusing on my weaknesses and how to change them has been an area I have always felt strongly about.  I engaged myself in at least some work that felt creatively fulfilling, while minimizing work that did not fit my skill set (I’m talking to you, excel building & repetitive tasks!) I was careful to only accept roles that I felt built upon my skills set and areas that I personally wanted to grow.

My journey at Dell took me from managing social media accounts for our internal consumer clients, to helping support a B2B website with regular content uploads, to currently managing the day-to-day projects of our new in-house content studio that creates real-time content and covers live event activations.  I couldn’t have combined my favorite aspects of previous jobs together in a better way if I tried. My previous career as an artistic director for a theatre company often found me managing numerous artists, developing creative projects, and briefing and hitting short deadlines. My previous career in social media management and strategy gave me the skill set (and love) of covering live event activations and developing quick turn content via social. I do all of these things in my current role.  Sharing my strengths with my managers and coworkers, and letting them know what type of work helped me feel creative and motivated, helped put me in the right place at the right time to accept my current role.  

Dell Content Studio Team2. Make opportunities for yourself

Corporate America is what you make it. In my first six months at Dell, I created an opportunity to thank happy customers via social video. We named the program #DellLove, formed a team of volunteers from across the company, and began creating personalized 1-to-1 videos to thank happy customers via social media. Since 2013 we have created over 1,000 personalized videos. This project gave me the opportunity to meet numerous people across a very large organization. Showing the KPI’s and success of the program gave me visibility to management and opportunities to speak and share what I and our team had created. I learned early on that Dell encourages initiative among its employees; they support taking calculated risks on creative ideas and people who, on behalf of the company, seek to try something new. The entrepreneurial spirit baked into our corporate culture has afforded me some of the most memorable moments of my career.  

 3. Make your role fit YOU

One thing that sold me initially on working at Dell was its focus on flexible work. With team members all over the globe and some working fully remotely, it became clear that where you got your work done was often of little importance. It was more important that you got it done and did it well! As part of our Legacy of Good plan, Dell has a goal to have 50% of their employees in flexible work arrangements by 2020, an initiative I fully embrace.

I created a schedule with a mix of at home time to focus on detailed projects, and in office time to network, meet face-to-face and make connections. Many of my colleagues work early or late, having a flexible schedule that allows them to pick up children or handle appointments. This is one of my favorite parts of Dell’s culture. My current role has me in the office most days out of the week, but the flexibility of taking a meeting from home, or collectively working from home one day a week as a team, gives us the freedom to make our work conform to our lives, and not the other way around.

Additionally, I have never been a person who loved to fly. I initially thought that this meant I should never accept a role with travel requirements. Over the past year, in my current role, I have learned to use alternative travel to get where I need to go. My experience of taking a train and bus cross country to attend and cover the Consumer Electronics Show with my team, further drove home that I have the flexibility to
The Long Way Homeget work done any time/anywhere. As a bonus, my colleagues enjoyed regular photo updates from a moving train. I am continually thankful for work that I can take on the road with me, and for a company and manager who supports my desire to travel in the way that fits me best. You can follow my journey as an unconventional traveler on my newly created travel blog, The Long Way Home.  

A career in corporate America (and really, anywhere) is all about knowing yourself and what you need. An organization that gives you space to learn and grow, encourages your strengths, and allows you the freedom to be yourself are essential to creating a role and a career that you love. I can say I’ve been able to create a career I am passionate about and maintain a work-life balance that I didn’t know was possible in corporate America. Every day, I look forward to seeing where my journey, both figuratively and literally, will take me…