Career Transition
My Career Journey
Business & Product
Development Research
Real Estate & Design Consultancy
Business Analysis & Entrepreneurship
Graduate School
(Design Entrepreneurship)
Architecture
Strategy Consulting
Strategy Roles in tech
FUTURE
PAST
PRESENT
Since 2016, I had embarked on a career transition process that took me from working as a project architect in a major industrial design consultancy to the realm of strategy. I faced two major challenges during this period: deep confusion resulting from having interests across a broad swath of topics from business to design and policy, and a lack of exposure to different roles of interest. This framework that I developed helps address both.
The interim period has seen a lot of lateral efforts and initiatives play out in trying to unite design with business - two of my identified areas of interest. Although rife with uncertainties and fear, it was highly exploratory and experimental. The main platform for the latter was attending graduate school at the University of Michigan, where I warped my architecture program into one focusing on real estate development and design
entrepreneurship; my graduate thesis produced a board game that sought out new value propositions for built environment designers by teaming up with other industries and roles. Afterward, I worked as a real estate and design consultant, trying to unite warring city council factions over downtown development concerns through creating a city center masterplan proposal, simultaneously addressing its affordable housing concerns as well. I proceeded to consult for a major US glass manufacturer on product and business development strategies by analyzing the future of the real estate, design, and construction industries, and their relationship with emerging technologies. I transferred this experience to develop a business plan for an offsite real estate, design, and construction startup as part of its founding team, which then led me to work as a strategy consultant for a global infrastructure consulting giant, focusing on change management and digital transformation. The collective experience and education have now put me on a path toward the technology industry in related roles.
Throughout this process, I intuitively developed a framework that led me to where I am.
Framework Outline
This process begins with major retrospection and self-discovery, enabled through personality tests, and most importantly, the practice of discovering one's Ikigai. Afterwards, it branches out into two main streams - role and industry discovery, both converging into a scheme for organization discovery and contact. Data research and networking process continued parallelly in varying intensities throughout.
1A
Data Research
1B
Networking
1C
Ikigai
1D
Personality Tests
2A
Role analysis
2B
Role
transitions
2C
Role transition scenario comparison (method 1)
2D
Transition timeline
Role transition scenario comparison (method 2)
2F
2E
2nd Graduate Degree:
Pros & Cons
3A
Industry analysis 1
3B
Industry analysis 2
4A
Firm
list by industry
4B
Firm & contact list, network tracker
Connecting career to purpose: Ikigai
Originating from Japan, Ikigai, in my interpretation, is a concept of self-understanding, one that can be directly tied to discovering one's role and industry of choice. It asks to identify four aspects of oneself: what one loves doing, what one is good at doing, what society needs, and what society is willing to pay for; Ikigai is achieved when all four circles unite. It drives one to discover skills and roles that comprise all of these four components, and in the process grounds such roles with purpose, which is also revealed by this exercise. Both role & industry discovery is aided by the discovered purpose.
Delight & Fullness but no wealth
Satisfaction, but feeling of uselessness
LOVE
GOOD AT
PAID FOR
NEEDS
Passion
Profession
Vocation
Mission
IKIGAI
Excitement & Complacency, but sense of uncertainty
Comfortable but feeling of emptiness
Role Discovery
This was the longest and the hardest part of my journey as it demanded the compilation of a lot of research on different roles, from articles, videos, interviews, job descriptions, and various other data points. The information was then assorted into different factors and eventually summarized into pros and cons, represented in the table header below. As a second stage analysis, the table was converted into a heat map that allowed a process of elimination, eventually distilling a couple of roles.
Roles
Purpose
Values
Tools
Job Availability
No. of Applicants
Applicant
Background
Pros
Cons
Role 1
Role 2
Role 3
Role 4
Role 5
Role 6
Roles
Purpose
Values
Tools
Job Availability
No. of Applicants
Applicant
Background
Pros
Cons
Role 1
Role 2
Role 3
Role 4
Role 5
Role 6
Roles
Purpose
Values
Tools
Job Availability
No. of Applicants
Applicant
Background
Pros
Cons
Role 1
Role 3
Role 5
Role discovery was also the hardest part of the process since I have interests in multiple roles, and want to try them out for some periods of my future career. Instead of forcing an elimination process to result in a single role, I arranged all the remaining ones into combinations of transitionary stages accounting for the ease of transition as seen in the industry. That resulted in multiple scenarios.
Stages
Roles
SCENARIO 1
CURRENT STAGE
Stage 1
Role 3
Stage 2
Role 5
Stage 3
Role 1
Stages
Roles
SCENARIO 2
CURRENT STAGE
Stage 1
Role 1
Stage 2
Role 5
Stage 3
Role 3
Stages
Roles
SCENARIO 3
CURRENT STAGE
Stage 1
Role 5
Stage 2
Role 3
Stage 3
Role 1
Stages
Roles
SCENARIO 4
CURRENT STAGE
Stage 1
Role 3
Stage 2
Role 1
Stage 3
Role 5
Each scenario was then partially evaluated against the desired states of the factors shown in the table header below. The evaluation is partial since for ease of decision-making, only the immediate stage was evaluated, keeping in mind the stages that would follow.
Good Pay
Job Security
Job Availability
Time / Cost Impact
Strategy - Product Component
Tactical Component
Quantitative Component
Psychology Component
Design Component
Qty. of Select Firms
Social Impact
Multiculturalism
DESIRED STATE
Stages
Roles
CURRENT STAGE
Stage 1
Role 3
SCENARIO 1
Stage 2
Role 5
Stage 3
Role 1
Stages
Roles
CURRENT STAGE
Stage 1
Role 1
SCENARIO 2
Stage 2
Role 5
Stages
Roles
CURRENT STAGE
Stage 1
Role 5
SCENARIO 3
Stage 2
Role 3
Stage 3
Role 1
Stages
Roles
CURRENT STAGE
Stage 1
Role 3
SCENARIO 4
Stage 2
Role 1
One scenario was then chosen, and a monthly timeline of upskilling action items towards achieving that was developed since my academic training did not directly support my newly discovered career ambitions. Some action items were strategic in that they supported future stage roles, and were recorded in the top part of the table below.
Stages
Roles
CURRENT STAGE
Stage 1
Role 3
SCENARIO 1
Stage 2
Role 5
Stage 3
Role 1
Month 1
Month 2
Month 3
Month 4
Month 5
Month 6
Month 7
Month 8
Action Item 1
Action Item 2
Action Item 3
The challenge of deciding between different scenarios remained nonetheless, as at least 1-2 previously discarded ones kept resurfacing in my discovery process from time to time, both as a result of analysis-paralysis, and discovery of new information. Using the collective knowledge gained to date, all the scenario roles were arranged in a relatively simple relationship to help identify some possible transitions, depicted by the grey region below. While the roles may appear definitive, they are also given the space to include similar or comparable roles as found in different organizations, and of course, future uncertainties.
Role 1
Role 6
Role 7
Role 2
Role 3
Role 4
Role 5
current role
One scenario analysis stage needed me to decide whether going back to graduate school for a relevant degree in the short run would be a good option; a simple table listing pros and cons of going versus not going helped gain clarity on the matter, again keeping in mind that conditions may shift in future depending on industry and role development, and changes in personal situations.
Going back to school
Pros
Cons
Not going
Pros
Cons
Industry Discovery
Industry discovery was relatively simple to the role discovery process, due to a good sense of self-awareness achieved in the initial steps of this discovery journey, informed primarily by past experiences. Select industries and their essential attributes were listed and understood through pros and cons; converting the information into a heat map allowed for a process of elimination to result in target industries.
Industry
Description
Values
Growth
Impact Areas
Pros
Cons
Role 1
Role 2
Role 3
Role 4
Role 5
Role 6
Industry
Description
Values
Growth
Impact Areas
Pros
Cons
Role 1
Role 2
Role 3
Role 4
Role 5
Role 6
Industry
Description
Values
Growth
Impact Areas
Pros
Cons
Role 1
Role 3
The tabular representation of the industry elimination process fell short of expressing industry adjacencies and overlaps, which were two major factors in deciding which industry(s) to prioritize now and in the long run. The two diagrams below, the first of which groups industries by discipline and measures personal desirability helped reach that conclusion, denoted by the pink region for diagram 1. The diagram on the right is somewhat of an alternative to the left one: in this case, desirability is measured by circle size and border thickness, and the outer grey circle denotes the long term focus area.
Discipline / Industry Group 1
Industry 1
Discipline / Industry Group 2
Desirability Level 2
Desirability Level 1
Industry 2
Industry 3
Industry 4
Industry 5
Discipline / Industry Group 3
Discipline / Industry Group 4
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
legend
Industry
Firm Contact
The role and industry analysis converged towards identifying select firms with the potential for hiring for desired roles; firms were selected based on a multitude of factors, the crucial ones of which are shown in the table header below. Other important factors considered were product or service, values and culture, clients, workforce size, workforce, revenue, and profit growth. This table also tracks networking meetings with contact people relevant to each firm.
Role
Firm
Location
Industry
Posted Salary
Contact Person
Application Date
1st Contact Date
2nd Contact Date
3rd Contact Date
Role 1
Role 2
Role 3