I have written a few blogs on career development. This will be my last one on this topic for a while but wanted to one more around experiences and career planning.  This is directed for people more in larger organizations.  For me and for many others, your career is a journey that at times sometimes it is hard to figure out what you should do as a next step.  For example for those of you that went and got your MBA, it is difficult to decide if you should get into investment banking, consulting, corp finance, etc.  It is also difficult to figure out which variables are important in making the decision (family, money, work life balance, location, industry, development opportunities, large vs. small companies, etc.).  In addition, if you pick corp finance for example (which is what I did after 2 years of consulting), you still have to make big career decisions along the way (international opportunities, management roles, different functional finance roles, etc.)  Finally, even if you have some preferences on what you want to do, sometimes you are not able to do them as timing not right, not deemed ready for the increase in scope, etc.  I have included my thoughts on two career stages below  (new grad – undergrad or MBA) and more experienced employee.  

For a new finance graduate, it is so difficult to make a decision on what to do.  If you are graduating from undergrad and you know that you want to go back for your MBA in a few years time, then that helps.  One thing that is an interesting trend that I have noticed is that you are expected to have a foundation in accounting and auditing to reach divisional or the functional CFO level.  One approach to think about is to do this early in your career.  That is, learn the finance basics, understand financial statements, accounting, etc. that will help you as you gain more responsibility in your career.  In addition, it’s important to not job hop early on in your career.  Hence, going to a small company from college sometimes is not the best option if you feel that there is some risk.

For MBA grads, as noted above hard to figure out what discipline.  Money is a huge factor that motivates people towards I-banking, venture capital and small companies that you think have a chance of going public in the near future.  However, enjoying the work that you do and having a work life balance are sometimes overlooked by MBAs caught up in the excitement of entering into a profession with the possibility of getting rich quickly.   In addition, some larger companies can offer very good career development, training and diverse job opportunities that small companies sometimes cannot offer.  Do not get me wrong, if you think you have found the next Facebook, etc. you should definitely think about it.  However, for every Facebook there are 100s of other companies that do not do as well.  Just something to think about.

Now for those of you that have been with the same company for 5, 10 or 20 years, you have major career decisions to make as you move up in the organization.  Do you try and focus on developing functional expertise in one area and grow scope or go for breadth of experiences?  This is really up to the individual and depends a bit on the organization.  I have been at Microsoft for 10 years and am in process of moving to France to be the CFO for Microsoft France.   I could have stayed at corp in several interesting roles but the experience of being in a subsidiary for myself and family made it clear that this was a great role and made sense for me and is consistent with next steps in my career plan.   

No matter what level in an organization, it is important to spend time creating a career plan.  This will allow you to have good discussions with your manager, determine what experiences and development you need to execute against your career plan.  Yes, things change but having some idea on the direction you want to go helps your manager help you in your career development.

Just some thoughts on career planning.  I have seen many Excel models as well as branch diagrams for career plans and think the most valuable part is not the output but going through the process itself.

Thanks,
Byron Rader
Senior Finance Director, Microsoft