Why having a ‘Portfolio Career’ is important to me

Guest blog by Mohammed Ibrahim

With my one-year anniversary at Portfolio People having come and gone I feel like I have grown as a person. I believe this can be put down to having more life and work experience. The life experience part is pretty self-explanatory, as I am a year older and a year wiser. However, the work experience I have gained is quite different, it is more of a ‘Portfolio Experience’. What I mean by a ‘Portfolio Experience’ is a collection of experiences from different roles within Portfolio People and outside it. These experiences comprise of working in various cricket and football stadiums as a Security Guard, whilst also working as a Business Development intern. Managing a ‘Portfolio Career’ can be difficult, but in order to benefit fully from it one must understand what he/she wants.
 
For example, the several different stadiums that I work for have different pay structures, host different sports, and have different professional development, just a lot of differences in general. The question that you and I must ask ourselves is what truly motivates us? Initially, when deciding which role to choose I was leaning towards short-term gratification as I never saw myself being in this type of job for too long. Essentially, I was going for the job that gave me the most job satisfaction, and as a student what satisfied me the most was flexibility and pay. This meant that in the summer I prioritised working in cricket stadiums above any other type of role, even though I was a football fanatic. However, once I became a regular member of the cricket security team I yearned for more. Three years later here I am, still yearning for more than pay and flexibility. Recognition of the work I did for the security team, learning new skills and progression in my career to name a few things. I did not get any of these whilst working at cricket stadiums.   

External pressures meant that I needed to work in cricket stadiums as it paid the most in the shortest amount of time. However, where is the point where I decide that money plays a very little role when deciding what type of job I should take?  I feel that I am not quite at that stage at the moment. I feel that I am looking around realising that I want more, but my financial situation is not allowing me to go with my heart. At a lower wage, all you think about is money, but when you get to a point where you are earning an amount that makes you comfortable, where do you go? Stay satisfied with your current position and not focus on improving your position? It goes against human nature to do this; we are easily satisfied when we have less as opposed to when we have more. But as we start to understand that true job satisfaction require more than a quick buck, then we are taking the first steps in being fully satisfied.

In the wise words Steve Jobs,

“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it”.
 
Great work. This is all down to interpretation and as you have already gathered… I don’t value the work I am doing in security.
 
However, all hope is not lost. My current role at Portfolio People is a lot more satisfying than my role as a Response Steward; at times it does not even feel like work. But would I call it good work? At the moment I find it enjoyable but as Steve Jobs put it so well, ‘you’ll know when you find it’, and I feel like I still have not found it.
 
This is why having a ‘Portfolio Career’ is so important to me. Without the option to delve into other sectors and have different experiences, it may take me longer to find what could motivate me to wake up earlier in the day (other than the idea of losing my job). Take longer to find out which type job could make me enthusiastic about what the day could bring. That is my idea of ‘good work’, that is my ideal career.

Many thanks to our guest blogger Mohammed Ibrahim