If there were one piece of advice which I would give to a young person that I think is applicable to every career (and other parts of life) it would be:
You have to say what you want, out loud. No one can see inside your head. If you want to do a job or get into an area, you need to say so.
If you want a job, and you’re being interviewed, at the end of the interview say “I’d love to do this job”.
If you are interested in a new role or area say, out loud, fairly often “I’d really like to get into x”.
If you want to do a kind of project keep saying “I’d love to make an x”.
This works, and keeps working, throughout your career. It won’t always work! You don’t know who knows who though. Keep on saying “man I’d love to make a x/work in y/be involved in z” whenever you’re in relevant company.
You don’t need to say anything else really. It can get bad and pushy when you say “can you help me with that?” You’re just expressing your own enthusiasms and desires. Eventually they will strike the right person at the right moment.
I keep forgetting this, but it’s literally how I ended up working with Douglas Adams. I saw him interviewed on telly about his new media company. Then I bumped into a college chum who asked if there were any companies I wanted to work for. When I mentioned TDV, he said he’d just set up their network
There is another important reason to do this. An employer who then offers you something that isn’t what you want; when you have made it clear what you want; is a bad employer and you’ll save yourself a lot of stress spotting that early enough.
I don’t know if they’re bad for offering you something else? For all they know, you might want that too! Or might want it more! But you can say (if it’s true) “no thanks, I don’t want that, I want x or y.”
(They may be bad for offering something they turned out to be lying about?)
Basically in that when you make it clear what you want and then they ignore you. The most common tactic of management, especially in the UK is just to ignore people who they have no interest in helping.
