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Hendra Wong, Engineering Manager at Checkr, shares the best practices for successful career growth and finding opportunities.
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Something I’m passionate about is nourishing the growth of other fellow engineers. My mentor once shared an important lesson: owning your career growth is essential. That means ensuring you find opportunities to help you scale your role into something you want.
Rather than letting someone tell you how you should move through your career, owning your career growth changes that perspective. Managers are often busy with their own schedules, tasks, and growth. By relying on managers to help them grow, individuals often have opportunities to fall through the cracks or take on responsibilities that don’t interest them.
On the reverse side, it is essential that managers have a clear career ladder to inspire the growth of their reports. At my company, we have a transparent career ladder that describes the levels of growth. For example, engineers move through being junior, senior, staff, and principal.
Each level in the career has its own description, typically split into two main parts: technical and communication. I recommend that leadership adds items that are important at a certain level, such as working on projects or mentoring other engineers.
The engineers on my team have access to the career ladder and requirements for each level. If a company does not have this transparency within its company, it would be a good chance for individual contributors to start a conversation with their managers. Without career ladders, team members cannot set goals or understand the expectations for the next role.
I recommend that team members keep a journal of any work they do. This can be broken down into specific tasks that are notable, achievement-worthy, or day-to-day work. During quarterly or end-of-the-year reviews, this journal comes in handy to remember important tasks that may be overlooked during these meetings.
When you are ready to grow your career or transition into another role, the journal holds your experiences at your fingertips. At the end of the day, your promotion or career growth depends on the results that you have shown.
