Invest early in your career

Positive Minds | Positive Stories | Edition 004

I'm a Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Engineer by training. I started my career in Guinea as Technical Adviser. Early in my career, I wanted to diversify my career options. Through a combination of distance learning and learning by doing, I self-learned computer programming, accounting, and English.

I used the skills acquired to develop an application for the financial monitoring of community-managed projects. After a three-month pilot phase, the country director decided to roll it out nationwide and make it mandatory.

When the position of Operations Manager, in charge of finance, HR, admin and IT, became vacant; the country director wrote a business case to the HQ to appoint me in the role. This episode marked the beginning of my international career. That was 20 years ago.

Moral: Start with the end in mind and develop a roadmap to get there. During your journey, keep learning to acquire new skills, explore new areas to stretch yourself, and always ask for help.