Member stories

Pursuing Your Passions, the British Way

UK Sunny Image for blog post

Are you following your passions? At some point, we’ve all thought about what might be our dream career and whether we are on that journey yet or not as our search for professional fulfillment is one of the most important in our lives.

Today, we launched What’s Your Dream?, a campaign in the UK to highlight the professional journeys of some truly inspirational LinkedIn members. These members have not only found their dream careers, but found success while pursuing their passions.

As a Director of Consumer Marketing in EMEA, I’ve been lucky enough to meet many LinkedIn members from across Europe, and have been fascinated by how professional attitudes vary by geography and culture. The differences between cultures in how people talk about and approach their careers rather reminds me of differences in humour (think the UK vs US versions of The Office). Us Brits tend to be ambitious, but quietly so. We worry about being too showy on our profiles. We know networking is important but are nervous about how to do it authentically and we prefer people to be understated about our success and accomplishments.

What’s particularly powerful for me about the stories we are sharing today is that our members have talked about their journeys in a very British way – understated and humble seems to be the order of the day.

We recently conducted research in the UK that reflects this sentiment; nearly 1/3 of Brits shy away from talking about their achievements in interviews and annual reviews and 40% admit to feeling uncomfortable when networking with people they don’t know. Surprisingly, over half of Brits say they have no career plan.

We hope that these stories from a few of our members who are living out their passions will inspire more of us to push for what we want.

Roshni Goyate found that being tied to a single full-time job didn’t provide her the flexibility to do all the things she really cared about. In the middle of the recession, she gave up a steady income for the daunting task of going it alone. See how she’s getting on.

Sunny Panesar left an uninspiring job to follow his dream in design. He went on to join Crux, a small independent design company. After reaching out to new clients, Sunny was able to secure a deal to supply the cycling helmets for the British team. See his story.

Olivia Abramsohn had a passion for food from a very early age. When university ended, she found it hard to turn that passion into a career. But with sheer determination she managed to land her dream job. See how it happened.

We hope that you enjoy these stories and are as inspired by them as we are. We would also love to hear your stories, whatever country you are from. If you have one to share, please let us know or write a post on LinkedIn with the hashtag #MyLinkedInStory. For more inspiration, check out more success stories.