What People Have Learned From Their Biggest Career Mistakes
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Here's your money briefing for Thursday, August 10th. I'm J.R. Whelan for The Wall Street Journal. Not everyone's career path is the same, and some people make decisions along the way that can cost them time and money.
The mistakes really ranged from jumping after a higher dollar salary offer elsewhere at a company without a cultural fit, or trying to become a changemaker in a setting that wasn't ready for that, to recognizing that some of those moves came with dead-end career paths.
We'll talk to WSJ's Demetria Gallegos and a vice president of finance whose misstep during her climb up the ladder caused her career to stall. That's after the break.
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The Wall Street Journal asked readers and listeners what was their biggest career mistake and what they learned from it. Among those who responded was 36-year-old Georgia resident Wasia Kaman. She's now the vice president of finance at a nonprofit and has been working in the field for about 15 years.
For me, being in accounting and finance, it was over-focusing on certifications. So I am a CPA, a CMA. I went for my MBA. And I thought that having all these credentials were going to magically make my career amazing in all ways. But I came to find out there was more that was needed. And that extra was definitely the soft skills.
Now, looking back, what would you tell your younger self if you were just starting out your career now?
Definitely be balanced in what you decide to learn in your professional development.
What is the episode about and who hosts it?
So I went for my CPA. I think right after I should have gone from some type of leadership workshop, right? I went for my CMA. Another step could have been how to be better at data storytelling, negotiation, even sales. So for me, it's really about being balanced, balancing the technical skills with those soft skills, those success skills.
Wall Street Journal editor Demetria Gallegos joins us now. So Demetria, in Wasea's case, she focused on gaining certifications and credentials and lost sight of more general, softer skills. What did other people say were the mistakes they made along the way in their career?
The mistakes really ranged from jumping after a higher dollar salary offer elsewhere at a company without a cultural fit or trying to become a changemaker in a setting that wasn't ready for that to recognizing that some of those moves came with dead-end career paths or recognizing that If they had stayed where they were today, they would have been in a stronger position than having made that jump. So it's a lot of question of timing and a lot of question of paths not taken. But more often than not, these are the people who are able to point to something that taught them a lesson that has helped them establish their feelings of success later in their careers.
Several people you spoke with said things like they wish they had more patience and empathy, or they didn't tout their skills enough. That's not necessarily germane to a specific field, but what are the more intangible things that created obstacles?
Yes. It seems as though a lot of these inflection points came about as a result of sort of esoteric concerns that were not necessarily on the career map that they had laid out for themselves. In one case, for example, a gentleman had a job offer at IBM, which was his dream company, but it was so far from home and he had never really left that nest that he ended up declining and then it took him 12 more years to
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