Dr Mary McMillan
www.linkedin.com/in/mary-mcmillan
When the EMCR Forum announced that the theme for this year’s Science Pathways meeting was ‘sustainable careers’, a few people had questions. First and foremost: what does ‘sustainable career’ really mean?
Allow me to paint you a picture.
Imagine, year after year, heading into work knowing that you’ll be engaged, interested and challenged. You feel that your work makes great use of your current skillset, but also gives you the opportunity to explore, learn and develop new skills. The people you work with help energise you, and you feel that you’re a valuable, and valued, member of a team. Your work helps give purpose and meaning to your life and, perhaps most importantly, you’re able to fit your work together with the other things in your life that are important to you, like your family, your friends, and your hobbies.
It sounds like a dream, doesn’t it?
Interest in sustainable careers has been on the rise in recent years, perhaps unsurprisingly given the major disruption that has happened in all of our lives. Research scholars in the field have worked on defining what a sustainable career is, and what factors influence it. One such scholarly definition of a sustainable career is ‘the sequence of an individual’s different career experiences, reflected through a variety of patterns of continuity over time, crossing several social spaces, and characterised by individual agency, herewith providing meaning to the individual’ (van der Heijden and De Vos, 2015). To put it more simply, a sustainable career is one that endures over time, and brings us health, happiness, and a sense of productivity. It’s having the career that is the perfect ‘fit’ for you, at any given time.
Why should we care about building a sustainable career? We spend a large proportion of our lives at work, and who wants to spend that time feeling disengaged, stressed, bored, or downright miserable? Surely it makes sense that we might want a career that is motivating, meaningful and brings us enjoyment. A sustainable career means we can feel productive, and be engaged with lifelong learning. A sustainable career gives us security, by making us highly employable. A sustainable career supports our mental and physical health, and allows us to achieve the holy grail – a healthy work–life balance.
So now that we all know that we want one of these sustainable careers, how do we go about getting one?
It’s a great question – and unfortunately there is no one easy answer. A sustainable career will look different for each of us, depending on our own values, interests, and life circumstances. So while I don’t have all the answers on how to build a sustainable career (as an EMCR I’m still trying to figure out what that looks like for myself!), there are a few things I think we can all keep in mind.
One key to building a sustainable career is to know yourself – to know who you are and what it is that you want to achieve. What are the things that you value in life? What is your purpose – the thing that gets you out of bed in the morning? What makes you feel energised and engaged? When we focus on getting to know ourselves, and to really understand who we are and what we want, we can start to take steps towards a career that gives us all of those things. Often people feel discontent in their current careers because there is a mismatch between what they are doing, and what they themselves value and want to achieve. Self-reflection can be incredibly valuable. If you’re in a role that is making you unhappy, can you pinpoint the things that are making you feel this way? If you’re in a role that you love, what things are happening for you that makes this a good fit? This sort of self-reflection can allow us to identify what it is that we want or need in a career, and help us to identify opportunities that will provide us with those things.
Having a growth mindset can be invaluable in crafting your career. We can take control of our own careers by being proactive about continual development of skills and abilities. Being open to challenging ourselves, to learning and trying new things can help us be more energised and positive in our work, and can open up new opportunities. Likewise, we can also be flexible and adaptable, and be open to working in new ways and embracing new challenges. We also need to know our value – to be able to identify our strengths and skills, and how these align (or don’t align!) with our own personal goals, and the goals of our employers. We can seek opportunities and people that energise and excite us, and whose values align with our own.
Each and every one of us is in the drivers’ seat of our own careers. We all have our own unique set of interests, skills and values. Building a sustainable career is about finding the people and places that let us use them – and leave us feeling happy, healthy and fulfilled.
© 2024 Australian Academy of Science
