Hi I’m a newbie sincerely looking for some advices here regarding career development.
Background:
NUS Mechanical Engineering Graduate
Job title: Field Engineer
Experience: 1 year in a regional hq of a Japanese MNC (main player in certain manufacturing industry)
Age: 24
Income p.a.: 45k
Skill set: Good communication skill, great exposure to asia pacific market (frequency of traveling = 2 weeks in one month), analytical skill, regional sales experience across asia pacific
Predicament:
With a degree from local uni (without honor however), I consider my income p.a as average, compared to other engineers in this industry. After one year struggling in the company, I realize that if I work my hardest for the next 9 or 10 years, the maximum height I would be able to clinch would be an engineering department head (Japanese top management will never treat local staff equally), drawing about 100k p.a. Yeah traveling around is fun, but I can’t imagine myself doing the same thing for the next 10 years. And yeah there will be also more management stuff as I climb up the corporate ladder, but as mentioned Japanese top management is always on top of you therefore there is nothing much you can do in fact. And taking the sad life of engineer in Singapore into consideration, I dun really see it a point to continue the engineering path.
Therefore, I’m seriously considering for a hop to banking sector. Read a lot of stuff on banking sector in this forum, and interested to start off as a RM in a local bank, which I believe it would be a quite a good match for my skill set to the job requirement; and yeah as suggested by some experts this might be the weakest link to break into the FO.
Knowing that the longer I stay in the engineering field the harder I can have a successful career switch, so I guess maybe it’s a good time for me right now to start something new.
Comments/advices are welcomed. Thanks !