Kickigai Weekly
Posts
Career mistakes & dealing with failure

Career mistakes & dealing with failure

How to make mistakes suck a bit less

Giammarco Pacifico & Federica Montrone
February 28, 2024

On the journey to building the perfect career, it's common to fall into a rut.

Especially when starting a career, the risk of taking up the first opportunity that comes around is high, and this may have a significant impact in the future.

If you're one of the few lucky people to find the right opportunity for you on your first attempt, you've hit the jackpot. However, almost every time, your first jobs are not the ones you'll pursue your entire life. And that’s ok.

The right opportunity for you depends on many aspects:

Salary
Responsibilities
Work environment
Internal vs external interactions

Some people might already have a clear idea of what they want for each of those aspects and only need a few attempts to find the right opportunity that satisfies them all.

Others need time to internalise their ideal situation for each aspect and coming to a crisp idea might require exploration. Self-knowledge plays a crucial role in this, but trying out different perspectives is usually an effective method to stress test your assumptions and find out for yourself.

The role of failure

Everybody says that failing is great and that you either succeed or learn.

The truth? Failing sucks.

Especially if you’ve poured all your energy into something and then failed, you’ll be devastated.

Until you realize that winning all the time is not a good sign.

It means you’re not doing anything hard: you are either in the wrong situation, playing by the wrong rules or working with the wrong people.

Sometimes the path in front of us is laid out so clearly that we feel there is no other way to succeed and when we don’t, the world starts crumbling.

It turns out that every failure comes with a change in path - a missed opportunity opens the door to a new world of possibilities that we could not have imagined beforehand.

If this does not make sense right now, it’s because you’ve not experienced a big failure yet. Once you do, you’ll appreciate how much of a difference this shift makes, I promise.

How do we know?

Because we’ve learned this lesson early in our careers.

“I will never forget what it felt like being rejected for a Master in Biomedical Engineering at ETHZ (my dream university at that time) and how I was sure my career was gonna fall apart. After a few months instead, I got accepted into EPFL and if it wasn’t for that opportunity I would not be where I am today.”
Giammarco

A practical approach

Even if you could, you should not jump on the first opportunity that comes your way for two reasons:

Because it’s impossible to know beforehand (companies are full of surprises)
Your future you probably won’t agree (what looked like the best opportunity at 25 is probably going to make your eyes turn at 30)

The only thing you can do is allow yourself to make a mistake and over time better understand what works for you.

Knowing that you’re going to make a mistake sooner or later and that it’s not going to be the end of the world is somewhat freeing. It allows you to make more decisions and avoid the dreaded analysis paralysis.

If you’re starting in your career journey, here is the advice we would have liked to receive some years ago: “Begin to investigate career options as soon as possible, especially while studying”

One of our mantras is to make mistakes and fail as soon as possible.

The reason is simple: the cost of any mistake becomes less impactful as time goes by when compared to the same mistake made later in a career.

We are huge supporters of the idea that failing can lead to personal growth, especially because we have gone through this multiple times.

“If I hadn't failed my first university exam, I wouldn't have been forced to face my emotional response to rejection. I can't even imagine how much worse it would have been if I hadn't learned early on what rejection feels like.”
Federica

Failing an exam is just an example, but other mistakes could have a similar impact, which might take much longer to realise. This is the reason why the sooner you make mistakes, the better.

When it comes to careers, universities and your close network are not always helpful in understanding the opportunities available. Therefore, it's wise to talk to as many people as possible (especially if they are where you would like to be) and make time to do one or more internships. That is a good time to make mistakes without the burden of a huge risk and at this time, it’s also much easier to seek guidance and mentorship.

Remember: if you ask for direction, you will find fulfilment just around the corner!

If you enjoyed this issue, share it with someone afraid of making career mistakes.

This week's top scientific reads

Advancements in Protein-Ligand Prediction (Iambic Therapeutics)
Edible Rice-Beef Hybrid is here! (Nature)
T-cell Engineering to Enhance Cancer Immunotherapy (Nature)
Gender Disparities in Autoimmune Diseases (NYT)
Google to Change Physician-Patient Conversations (ArXiv)

Read the highlights of these articles here.

Latest European funding rounds in health & bio

WIVI Vision raised €4M (in equity and debt) for their gamified AI-based therapies for people with visual dysfunctions 🇪🇸
Tagomics raised €7.8M to advance its genomics platform for disease profiling and diagnosis 🇬🇧
Altavo raised €5M for an AI-based speech rehabilitation tool that leverages AI and state-of-the-art sensor technology 🇩🇪
Scinvivo raised €4.7M to enable optical biopsies to improve bladder cancer diagnostic 🇳🇱
Koalaa raised €1.1M to further develop their prosthetic limbs 🇬🇧
Samphire Neuroscience raised €2.1M for their wearable device that helps women manage menstrual pain using brain stimulation 🇬🇧
IsomAb raised 8.8M to develop a new treatment for peripheral arterial disease 🇬🇧
Amazec Photonics raised €1.5M to develop diagnostic devices using photonics technology for cardiovascular monitoring 🇳🇱
Avatar Medical raised €5M to convert CT scans and MRI images into 3D and VR representations of patient’s medical images 🇫🇷
AZmed closed a €15M Series A round for their AI-powered diagnosis tool for radiologists 🇫🇷
Medical Microinstruments raised €102M to develop robotics technology for soft tissue open surgery to treat complex medical conditions 🇮🇹
Capitainer raised €6.7M to advance their at-home sampling kits for the analysis of blood and urine 🇸🇪
Vitala Health raised €1.34 to help patients who are prescribed medical exercise to digitally track their progress 🇸🇪
GlycanAge raised €4.2M to advance their research in the field of glycan biomarkers and commercialise tests for biological age monitoring 🇬🇧
Phycom raised €1.75M to develop their microalgae-based alternative foods to improve food availability and quality for humans and animals 🇳🇱

Are you looking for a job in a fast-growing startup?