I am feeling lost in terms of my career aspirations. What can/should I do?

Dear all,

I hope I can receive some of your opinions/experiences/advice as to the dilemma I am facing now!

I am a local uni mechanical engineering graduate, 27 this year, and I managed to get into a graduate program in an US MNC, specifically in the engineering/manufacturing field.

I have just completed this 2 years program, and I realize that all that I've been doing is very general, like I don't have a specific skill set. Yes, I was exposed to different business functions, but it's only a little bit of everything, kinda like a jack of all trades, master of none. And that led me thinking on what I actually wanted.

Even after being exposed to these function like sales, marketing, operations, I still can't figure out what do I want.. I always said I want to go into supply chain/logistics, but I actually don't even know exactly what is it as supply chain represents a lot of functions.

What can/should I do? Thank you all so much!!

Discussion (4)

What are your thoughts?

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Jonathan Chia Guangrong

12 Oct 2018

SOC at Local FI

For your current role, are you exposed to any supply chain functions? What is it about supply chain or logistics that attracts you in the first place? Look deeper and find out exactly what attracted you, and see if you can maneuver into a role like this within your current company.

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Jeff Yeo

12 Oct 2018

amateur Social contributor at School of social sharing

There is no real right answer here instead I will share my personal experience

In my early career I went deep into one technology and felt really trapped. I wanted to learn broader skill sets and do many different things So I went to a generalist role where I did many different solutions and learnt a lot however that was a double edge sword as head hunters told me that I was doing too many things. They can’t really see what are my core abilities

i moved into a specialist role mid career and focused on a specific domain which I really enjoyed and helped pave the direction.

i am now in a more main stream domain with a lot more experience As such quite a bit of head hunters knock on my doors currently.

As long as your boss and company values you and provides new challenges to learn and grow then it’s ok to not know what you want.

Move around different companies to gain new experiences if you are feeling stuck.

The important thing is to never stop learning and growing.

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