Switching careers and building confidence

Ever wondered what it takes to make a life-changing career switch and whether you could ever be brave enough to do it? Join us as we explore Rachanee’s remarkable journey into progressively higher levels of leadership across multiple unrelated industries. Discover how she evaluated the opportunities that came her way, how she overcame gaps in her knowledge and how she navigated her status as the newbie multiple times over.

Discussion Topics: Switching careers and building confidence

• Introduction
• Going broke and getting her first job
• Doing what you know to overcome what you don’t
• A guideline for evaluating new career opportunities
• Her biggest challenge
• A woman in Logistics
• Being coached into leadership
• What is Success?
• Achieving fulfilment
• Three takeaways – and one thing you can do right away

Transcript: Switching careers and building confidence

Ritu: Welcome Rajchanee to the Rewrite The Rules podcast. We are so happy to have you with us and I’m really looking forward to our conversation and to learning from your brilliant career journey. So Rajchanee is an Asia Pacific Principal Investment Officer at IFC, an institute under the World Bank Group. She works in early-stage engagements with the private sector to create development and investment projects. So let’s start with how things are today. What are you doing today? What does your role entail at IFC? So tell us a little bit more.

Introduction

Rajchanee: Sure. Thank you very much for this opportunity to join you on this podcast. IFC is the only unit under the World Bank Group whose mandate is to support private sector companies. And the projects need to have this economic, social, or environmental impact at scale, the engagement that I undertake in this role is very much driven toward this crime made objective.

Going broke and getting her first job

Ritu: Nice. Thank you. So I want to start from the beginning when you started your career. Did you ever think you’ll end up doing what you’re doing today?

Rajchanee: Definitely not.

I graduated in dentistry with all the passion for that career. And after two years I started to realise that this is not for my long term. And right there I decided to take another degree and change my career.

So at that time, the stock market was booming and my sister worked for the stock exchange and advised me saying that if I really want to come into a business career, maybe finances is a program to go for.

And I didn’t want to spend another four years earning a bachelor’s degree. I already spent six years earning a dentist’s degree. So the only way is MBA.

I went to the United States for my degree. I pay for everything. I have been taking tuition since my bachelor’s degree. I was broke at that time. I have to come back quickly, to get back into my career. Unfortunately the year that I returned was the year that we had the Asian economic crisis.

So I worked there as a part-time dentist. But then after three months, I found a job I would like to pursue in a consulting firm. Were looking for a tax consultant and I knew nothing about tax. I wrote to the company to honestly say that I knew nothing about this road that you are recruiting, but these are my skill set, what I’ve been trained for and then they call me saying that they are looking for someone with a dual degree to work in the life science sector. To deal with the medical field.

Doing what you know to overcome what you don’t

Rajchanee: I work with a lot of women leaders in Asia as a coach And I know that sometimes people get very stuck with, oh, I’ve been doing this for five years. What if I change now?

Ritu: Will I lose everything that I’ve built now? Things like that and, therefore, I really want to hear from somebody like you who’s been so courageous to make these big shifts. Tell us more about how you were changing things and still being so successful.

Rajchanee: So I started off with Cooper Person line Blend. After less than a year, it merged with Price Waterhouse and became PBC.

And then because of the merger, I think there is redundancy at partner level. A team of us moved to Deloitte Consulting and I moved with them taking up a senior role. It is always at the back of my mind, right? I graduated with my degree, never worked in a real company yet, and then became an advisor to firms out there, right? And so I always think that I should go and work in a company and feel it myself, to run an operation for real before I come back to be an advisor again.

So there was an opportunity to set up joint ventures between US companies and Hong Kong companies that have a regional footprint for consumer products and healthcare products.

I was resuming a role that looked after a team of 160 people in sales, marketing, managing orders cash cycle management, trade credit, et cetera. So it was a real experience right in business and meanwhile, I was approached to join an education firm that has a footprint around the world owning high schools, prep schools, and universities and I took up that role because as a country director, it gives me another type of opportunity to oversee all functions in a company. And then a recruitment company offered me to join a logistics firm.

At that time I didn’t, I never knew about logistics, And I did, leveraged what skills I had and overcame what I didn’t know, right? I don’t know, the logistics. The way they usually go to market would be to engage with the supply chain director or procurement, but I would engage as C-suite in talking to the CEO and CFO in a strategic way to unlock the asset value that they have by outsourcing to professionals.

And the client always asks, why can’t you give us consultancy around demand planning, and inventory management? But my firm is not interested, right? It doesn’t generate the core business for the company. So I decided to leave and I found this fascinating job at the World Bank. That’s where I am now.

One guideline for evaluating new career opportunities

Ritu: Wow. you went from life sciences to the consumer to education to logistics. So did you ever plan it or did it just happen? Opportunities came and you took them on, like what is happening?

Rajchanee: To be honest, when I started in consultancy, I really loved the job. I thought that this was it. I’m gonna be there throughout my career. But then, as I share at the back of my mind, being an advisor without running it myself, I feel that something is missing.

Ritu: Yeah.

Rajchanee: When the opportunity came, I didn’t really look out yet but the opportunity came and I thought that this was a chance for me to experience it. And then I consider what’s in it for me and what I could contribute to the business.

Handling her biggest challenge

Ritu: What were some of the key challenges that faced during all these moves and during all these years of work that you have behind you.

Rajchanee: So first of all feeling confident, right? I think naturally from the beginning of anyone’s career when you started, the confidence is not there yet and for me, I switched. A big twist right? From dentistry to business, at the beginning. I actually still practise over the weekend just in case that I don’t succeed in business work so feeling confident was definitely a big challenge when you start something new.

Ritu: So what did you do to overcome that?

Rajchanee: I think the keyword is being a team player at all levels across all the jobs. It is important that we understand what we are, first of all, trying to achieve as a team, right? We need to understand the big picture and the ultimate goals, and then we see what you would and could contribute given our own experience, capability, capacity, and authority that you have, and then you look at people around us. What they can play for their parts, your team members, right?

You have to see what the strengths of your team members are that can compliment each other as a team. At the same time, you will be creating an opportunity and an environment for your team to develop their skill set as well, right?

For them to advance their career, and you will be guiding them. With your relevant experience help resolving issues with the authority you have or relationships that you have with the stakeholders. And, seek help, seek advice, seek guidance, input, and validation from your boss, your peers, your clients and specialists in your organisation. Make sure that you are on the right track toward the goal, right?

Being a woman in Logistics

Ritu: I want to apply a little bit of the gender lens here because since then we have been talking about women leaders in Asia. Did you ever think about your gender either? Played any role either in your success or in your challenge, like what was the role of you being a woman leader there?

Rajchanee: To be honest the space that I have been in, Gender inclusivity was there, there was only one company that I work with that I felt that I was the only woman in that panel, in the logistic firms that I work with. It’s so masculine, industry or so when, especially when we have executive retreat and the activities that they plan for, it’s so masculine, right?

They have soccer games and things like that which I can’t play, and I have to sit aside and that’s the wary moment that I felt that gender inclusivity was missing.

Ritu: The example that you gave is so telling of, executive retreats and doing activities which are more male to say. These are again, small things but again, think about the impact they have.

How her boss coached her to do better

Ritu: What’s been the role of organisations that you have worked with in, getting you to where you are, or in supporting you?

Rajchanee: For all roles that I work in and I would say fundamentally from the beginning. I was fortunate to join a consulting firm that gave me all the professional skills needed for me to progress into other organisations and throughout my career path.

And I was fortunate to start off, when, under the supervision of my boss who gave me independence and authority. He’s more like a coach to me. Right from the start, I was assigned to go overseas talking to CFO, in a major pharmaceutical company. It’s a country where I’ve never been and been alone, right?

It’s the first assignment. But looking back it’s a platform for me too. To develop myself and always he’s there. If I have any issues, I wasn’t sure. So it’s also an environment that built me into a team player when I grew up in my career.

What is success?

Ritu: Sitting where you are today in your career, how do you define success? What does success mean for you at all levels?

Rajchanee: Okay. I think we are in the organization to contribute to what the organisation wants to achieve, right? And so your success has to be in seeing the organisation’s success wherever you are in the organisation. Point number two is that you have further developed yourself. You learn some new knowledge. You build your network and that’s how I progress my career as well building on what I have achieved in the past job.

But then I also feel every time that I enter into a new space that I’m a minority. I’m an outsider, I’m not the core team. And you can feel it. In a negative way, lack of confidence that I mentioned and am not really part of the organisation yet. But, to my earlier point, if you started to align, to the common goal and figure out what you are there for to contribute, what then pray to, to your strengths?

And leverage your team to achieve success together the success.

Ritu: We also have to make an effort to just step in, recognize our strengths and step in and contribute to the common cause. That makes so much sense.

Three tips for early-career professionals

Ritu: What would you tell your younger self? Or what actionable tactical advice would you give your younger self looking back?

Rajchanee: I would say having agility to learn. Have an open mind, right? A gross mindset. Since the dynamic of today’s world is also changing all the time, I think the younger generation needs to have these characteristics in themselves. And then build your fundamentals, I was fortunate to join consulting that built my professionalism right from the beginning, and that’s became my fundamental right. And team players I cannot emphasise this more. The war is complex and you cannot achieve the goal on your own. It helps enhance the ability to achieve more if you are a team player and then have empathy for your team, and empathy for the stakeholders.

and then I think integrity is very important. If you don’t deliver what you promise or you over promise or other promises, I don’t think people will trust you, right? And last but not least, And this is one of the challenge throughout my career until now, is to have a balance to take care of yourself put your activities, personal activities in your calendar as well, so that you make time for it.

Ritu: Yes. I love that advice. Put those activities in the calendar because normally what happens, only work related stuff goes in the calendar, everything else stays out of it and then it never gets done.

Rajchanee: Right.

Achieving fulfilment

Ritu: Is there any interesting anecdote or a story that you remember from either the start of your career or middle of career that kind of maybe shifted your thinking or shaped your thinking?

Rajchanee: At Accenture, quite a number of years back, I started to think about what will fulfill my life more, right? Always working for the organisation target, right? Sales target.

It’s not that fulfilling after we achieve so many things, right? That defines ourselves. I started to think that I would like to work in a space where I could contribute to society, to the community. And I have a friend who works for the UN and I always told her that if there is anything open, let me know.

But then it’s always more like social work, which I’m not good at. So until I found this job at the World Bank that is it, this is where I could contribute what I have gained for all my career, to do more and achieve what I have been looking for is a purpose of life, right?

Ritu: Any last bit of advice or words of wisdom for our listeners?

Rajchanee: I think that the war is so exciting, right? Don’t be afraid and walk on it step by step. And build on what you have gained and give out to your team members as well because they also need to progress. And that’s how we could be successful together as a team.

Three takeaways – and one thing you can do right now

Ritu: Great. Thank you so much Rajchanee for this conversation. I really enjoyed myself and I’m sure our listeners will enjoy it too. I took away so much, but the ones that stood out for me, the first one was obviously the change.

Don’t be afraid. To make changes be bold and courageous. The fact that you went from studying dentistry to studying MBA, is as bold as one can get. So don’t be afraid. The other key takeaway was to go broad. I love the fact that you gained experience in life sciences, then consumer, then education, then logistics.

So it really made your portfolio so broad. And sometimes we are scared to do that. We just want to develop expertise just in one area, and once we do that, we are afraid to step out. So that was the second one for me that went broad and built expertise in multiple industries or functions.

And the third one I loved that you said is that while all of this is happening, seek out, help, seek out support, whether it’s with the organisation, outside organisation, whether it’s through your network. and the last one is the balance.

That’s the fourth one. But balance, put your personal activities in your calendar and that’s a very tactical advice that we can all start to do from tomorrow.

Rajchanee: You said go broad, right? But then anyway, I think we, we also need someone to go deep as well, right? So those who become specialist expertise, ex an expert in certain things. I think we also value their choice, right? Because we also need someone to go deep and yeah.

So yeah. Thank you.

Ritu: Okay. Thank you so much. Really enjoyed the conversation, and I hope you had fun too. I really enjoyed listening to your journey.

Rajchanee: Yes, I do. Thank you very much.

Our Guest: Rachanee Chanawatr

Rachanee Chanawatr is an Asia-Pacific principal investment officer at International Financial Corporation (IFC), an institute under World Bank Group, working in early-stage engagements with private sector to create development and investment projects in manufacturing, agribusiness, and services (healthcare, education, tourism, retail and property) industries.