This post is about my personal experience with possible careers path in the onshore wind industry - what are the easy and the not so easy movements. I believe that the main concepts would be applicable to similar industries, such as Solar or Offshore.

It’s applicable to medium and big size companies organized in a classic way (Engineering design the product - in my case a wind turbine, Sales & Tender Management sell it, Project Management build it).

I focused on the departments that are near to my professional experience – therefore I’m not keeping into consideration Service and all auxiliary departments (e.g. HHRR).

The most “natural” career path is upward: you start for instance as a (Junior) Project Manager, you become a Project Manager, Senior Project manager, maybe a Project Director (if this position exist in your company) and finally you land in a Head of Project management position.

What makes fun (and broaden your view of the company) is to have also “lateral” movements.

I believe that some are easier than other. For instance I know many Project Managers that become Tender Manager and vice versa, or engineers becoming Tender Manager. Somehow more rare is to see a Sales Manager becoming a Project Manager, or a Tender Manager becoming a Sales Manager.

It’s not impossible, I know a bunch of cases. However, Sales guy are usually a different class.

For instance I’ve never met an Engineer with a Sales background: I’m not saying that it’s impossible, but for sure is a less frequent (and more complicate) career move.

I tried to summarize visually the idea in the picture.

I also beleive that  moving “lateral and up” would make the change even more complicate.

For instance it would be complicate for Tender Manager to become a Senior Project Manager (or Project Director), but it would be much more complicate for a Project Manager to step into a Senior Sales Manager (or Sales Director) position.