What’s my biggest failure? I spent four years studying to become an electrical engineer and even worked at Siemens for a while. However, I wasn’t really interested in engineering. I chose it only because there’s an expectation in Pakistan that boys will become engineers, while girls will go into medicine. My problem was a societal one — I know lots of others who studied engineering mainly because of family pressure. They don’t actually have much interest in it. Like them, I felt I had to meet expectations and begin a career I wasn’t passionate about.
The world is changing, however. So, I had to overcome that traditional mindset and start a career in a digital field. I like digital marketing much more than electrical engineering. There are now many young people here in Karachi who are doing very well as video script editors, graphic designers or software developers. There are so many fields you can choose from.
I started learning on my own, doing courses online — on Skillshare and other platforms, for example. This was at the time when the Covid pandemic began and everything shut down anyway, so I could learn wherever and whenever I liked.
Now, I work for an agency in Karachi as the SEO team lead, managing website optimization and organic traffic for our clients, some of which are US healthcare companies. I enjoy the competitive part of search rankings — I always want my websites to be the best.
It is not easy to switch careers. You might feel a lot of negativity from people, even from your family, and that can cause anxiety and depression. My family has supported my decision to change, but I still heard comments like: “You’ve wasted four years at university.”
You have to ignore the negative comments, see the bigger picture and keep working towards your goal. Think about what you’re passionate about. If you choose a career in something you love, even if it means earning less money, you’ll have peace of mind and no regrets.
Essential SEO terms...
- Crawling: the process search engines use to discover content on web pages
- Earned media: third-party mentions of content, such as shares, retweets, etc.
- Indexing: the process of organizing the content discovered during crawling
- Metadata: data that gives search engines information about a web page
- Owned media: your own channels, such as a website, social media accounts, etc.
- Paid media: online ads you’ve paid for