Exploring my ‘drive’ made me change my career 😲

Spoiler: I'm moving out of Finance & Accounting

Everyone is motivated by 1 or many of these 6 things. Your career (& life) is just a process of elimination for what truly drives you. In my short 14 year career so far, I’ve gone through a process of elimination of all of the above.

For the last few years in January, I do a written self-reflection of the year past, and the year to come (perhaps I’ll do a post in the future of how to do this well). Reflecting on my journey into 2022 onwards I was crystal clear about one thing - I wanted to eventually start, build and run my own ‘thing’ eventually. Could be as techy as a Saas product, or as practical as a coffee shop. Many would say a Finance career is the perfect platform to gain the skills required to ‘start your own shop’. Well it’s not (Sampath’s bubble burst - Jan 22). You can sit through multiple CA sessions, University degrees, strategy courses and even P&L reviews, but the one thing Finance doesn’t teach you is how to build (and how to fail while building). The pandemic transformed me in one way - it turned me from being a schemer, to being a doer. (2019 Kevin - All talk no action, 2020 Kevin - Bit of action followed by the talk). And so I had something like the below in my mind and written down about my next opportunity.

Before there is a ‘grand reveal’ I wanted to share about what drives me to keep going & growing, and have the fire to create impact. Two words - Sacrifice & Legacy.

My dad started working before the age of 18 just to support his family back in India. He had to leave his house and go to a completely alien country (UAE) to work borderline illegal hours, eating the bare minimum, staying in less than ideal conditions, to support his mum & dad, and his brothers back home (this isn’t a sob story btw - it was a completely normal reality for many in that era).

My mum was the top of her class in everything. Got a nutrition science degree, and once she got married, had the best son in the world, and an ok daughter (haha jokes Sharon), she gave up her budding science career to become a teacher (to support the work life balance aspect and take care of us as kids). Once we moved to Australia, she went into customer service roles and is now doing amazing things at the ATO just through sheer drive & determination.

Both examples of sacrifice have set a solid foundation for me personally to avoid taking the opportunities we have in front of us for granted. The legacy part, well I’m a dad of a brilliant 2 year old son, and I want to be able to have him grow up and reflect on his dad and say ‘gee Dad had a crack’.

Which brings me to…

Your boy is going to lead a National Data & Analytics Recruitment division (powered by Hudson). Moving out of Finance is probably not the traditional route many would take, but given the context of everything above, it’s not that surprising. The opportunity also aligns with my 2022 onwards goals.

• Build stuff at work: I get the opportunity to drive the direction of our team, but more importantly think about how we can add value and care for our customers. Build - tick!

• Work with people I can learn from: I love the people I work with at Hudson, and I’m going to have the opportunity to work with some killer leaders & talent!

• Work in an uncomfortable, but comfortable space: I’ll be working in a sales environment, but in a space I’m familiar with (data & analytics). Data & Analytics is probably the space I felt most comfortable with in my Finance gig too so this was a no-brainer.

I’m grateful for everything the Finance & Accounting space has taught me, and it has no doubt set me up for whatever I will build in the future. For now though, I’m pumped to build something special with all of the guys in the Tech, Projects & Transformation biz @ Hudson (there’s a cool name being workshopped, as that is quite a mouthful lol). Let’s goooo!