Australian Financial Review

Colleen Ryan

Marius Kloppers, chief executive of BHP Billiton, spent nearly 10 years studying at universities on three continents before he launched his career.

He was a “late starter”, he says, and a “perennial student”. He was unsure of what he wanted to do in life. He was up and running by 30, however, and at just 44, Kloppers was head of the biggest mining company on the planet. Mind you, it wasn’t a particularly easy road. Before he settled into the big job in Melbourne, Kloppers had to move countries 11 times for either study or work.

Steve Killelea, founder of Integrated Research, took a different approach. He spent 10 years surfing before he settled down to a job. He had a passion that he needed to pursue. Killelea’s only tertiary education was a nine month crash course in computing. Now, having made his fortune, he is a self-styled social entrepreneur and Australia’s largest individual overseas aid donor.

Andrew Banks, co-founder of Morgan and Banks recruiting company, trained as a biologist and then worked as an actor before discovering a passion for business and human resources. He too made a fortune and recently sold his house in Sydney’s eastern suburbs for $52 million.

These are each, in their own way, unusual paths to success. A sense of aimlessness at the start and then the ability to change careers, grab opportunities, take risks.

The late Steve Jobs’s career has become a classic of this genre – a university dropout, a student of Buddhism, and then the founder of Apple who, through his innovations, went on to change all of our lives.

As the graduating class of 2011 begins to look for jobs at a particularly merciless moment in the world economy, these unusual paths to success could just provide a spark of hope. Or at least some ideas on direction.

For the rest of us – well, the world is changing and we may be forced to change along with it.

John Dakin, a director of career advice consultancy Directioneering, believes changes in the economy have changed career planning forever.

“The traditional view was that a career is a ladder but there are no ladders left any more,” Dakin says.

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