Kristina Kaganer is CPO of Navigator, an AI-powered adtech company which connects brands to travellers.
She runs a team of 16 people. She can code and champions women in STEM. She’s had a formidable career through Publicis, Anheuser-Busch InBev, Coty, MediaVest and Mindshare. Now she’s working in a startup.
The quickest path between two points might be a straight line, but it’s always the most effective, or constructive. At least, not when it comes to careers.
A shift is accelerating that traditional, linear progression is falling out of favour. Rigid nine-to-five structures are falling away as many seek more variety, fewer restrictions, greater flexibility and the ability to self-curate a varied career rather than climbing typical professional ladders. This change is also occurring across roles and industry variety; which has been my experience of the ‘squiggly’ career. When I look back on my own trajectory, it’s a ‘portfolio’ skills-first approach, set against corporate and 9-5 structures. I’ve moved from data to AI, from agency to in-house. From consumer insights to digital analytics, from audience strategy to data science. The through-line has been a ‘t shaped’ approach to management – building a greater breadth of experience, with a deep core of lead skills. I believe that tech in particular is more open to seeing the benefits in ‘patchwork’ careers, and what varied experience can bring to a role. Especially for an industry which thrives at the bleeding edge, pioneering thinking and new technology adoption. There are no lifelong experts when it comes to fresh tech.
At the forefront of new digital developments you tend to find people willing to learn fast, fail faster, pick themselves up and move forward. It fosters something of a community approach to work: there are fewer dominant role models to learn from. Instead, you find people who are equally putting themselves out there, breaking new ground and willing to share their learnings with others to see if they are applicable beyond individual experiences, or universal to the tech.
Moving from agency environments to brand-side strategy, and dipping into product development before embedding myself in the rapid-fire evolution of artificial intelligence, my career path looks less like a corporate ladder and more like modern art.
For a long time, that ambiguity was terrifying. How do you convince a hiring manager you’re exceptional at what you do, when you can’t be filed away neatly in a pre-labelled corporate box?
Instead, the box itself is increasingly obsolete.
In our era, specialisation has a rapidly shrinking shelf-life. In a digitally-driven world, and specifically an AI-influenced one, the ability to do one thing perfectly for thirty years is no longer a career insurance policy; it’s potentially a vulnerability. Generative AI is exceptionally good at linear, repeatable, structured tasks. It thrives in the “neat little boxes”. Where it stumbles, and where human capital becomes invaluable, is in the white space between disciplines.
This is one reason why the ‘squiggly’ path I have followed has led me to my current role – building out an industry leading commerce media platform which uses travel data signals as its engine. Having worked both brand and agency side, I understand their thought patterns and priorities. I have built an automation approach from scratch, in-house, and understand how to make a product unique enough that operators couldn’t do it themselves. Firsthand experience of ad ops within agencies means I get the thought process they go through, and can apply it to the foundation of how our product suits industry needs and priorities. It has also meant that I can look at the changing consumer patterns and trends occurring in the travel industry and see how the application of technology can enhance those journeys.
Here, nonlinear careers build distinct competitive advantage: they add connective tissue. When you have spent time in disparate areas of an industry, you develop a rare ability to synthesise information, use this varied perspective to connect seemingly unrelated dots, and translate complex concepts across departments. It’s not just about understanding the tech, but understanding the human behaviour driving it, the commercial realities funding it, and the cultural context receiving it.
This isn’t simply a comforting theory for the non-linear among us. The market is actively validating it. A Randstad annual survey found that over 72% of respondents believe that the traditional career ladder is outdated. According to LinkedIn, 73% of hiring organisations are approaching new roles with a skills-first approach rather than seeking highly specific industry experience – an increase of 17% in the space of three years. All the while, the rapid adoption of AI has meant that some 91% of organisations are seeking people with those particular tech skills. This places greater value and opportunity in the hands of those who have cultivated the know-how to be able to harness technology, and practically put it to work while maintaining a helicopter strategic view – precisely the kinds of people who thrive in this particular community.
The workforce is waking up to the fact that rigidity has a downside. When the underlying infrastructure of how we work is shifting every quarter, adaptability is the only real currency. The professionals thriving in this new paradigm aren’t the ones who waited for a playbook to be written out to follow. They are the ones comfortable operating in the grey areas, who view a pivot not as a loss of momentum, but as an acquisition of a new skill set.
To anyone currently staring at a fragmented resume, wondering how to narrate their twists and turns: stop trying to force your journey into a straight line to please tradition. The future belongs to the dot-connectors, the fast-learners, and the comfortably uncomfortable. A squiggly CV isn’t a lack of focus. It is a competitive edge.
