Julia was a research analyst for a major Wall Street firm. It turns out that her career was not so much a choice she made but more of a tradition she followed. Her father had founded an investment firm and groomed and trained his daughter, his only child, to take her place as the heir to his throne. The analyst position was her first step toward obtaining the real-world experience and training required before moving to dad’s firm.
Because one of her most important career values was monetary compensation, it seemed that Julia had it made. Yet her career was not a satisfying one. There was something missing, and Julia was determined to figure out what it was. She had a number of interests and passions, and it appeared that her current job, while meeting one need, was much too narrow in scope. She needed a much larger canvas on which to paint her life’s work.
It was fascinating to hear Julia talk about her career, her colleagues, and her ideas. She had a great imagination and a good deal of empathy for people. Julia was truly able to feel what others felt, and she related well to others’ emotional experiences. She took these experiences and blended them with her thoughts, resulting in extremely insightful and creative ideas. In a word, Julia had tremendous ability to use emotions to facilitate thinking.
Although she worked diligently on examining career alternatives, she resisted suggestions about a major career change that would allow her to pursue her interests and a career that rewarded her empathic and creative skills. It took some months, but after strongly rejecting the ideas, she came to realize that the financial services world was not for her. She was recruited by a start-up firm that was in the industry she had tracked as an analyst. Rather than becoming their financial analyst, though, Julia was brought on board as their vice president of marketing and new-product development. Here was a career that allowed her to leverage her strong creative abilities.