--> Career Path Choices: Technical, Managerial, or Something Else?

AAPG Annual Convention and Exhibition

Datapages, Inc.Print this page

Career Path Choices: Technical, Managerial, or Something Else?

Abstract

Managing our own careers is one of our most important jobs. You have chosen to study and practice geoscience, because it interests you, and it is the core of your occupational being. But that solid foundation is like the trunk of a tree; from it, main branches grow, and each branch from there is successively smaller and farther from the trunk. Such is your career. Each choice you make, like the branches, directs you ever farther down a smaller path in your career, and the number of your future opportunities decreases. Should you target a technical specialty? A managerial mentoring role? A managerial business role? Or something else? If you are undecided, you must make the fundamental choice as to direction, then lay out a plan. This presentation gives some guidance about how to evaluate yourself to make the early career choices and then how to direct your career to achieve your objective.