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Competitive pay may attract young professionals, but what keeps them is often more personal: purpose, ownership and opportunities to grow. In this International Youth Day special, Jingting Li, Talent Acquisition Director, APAC, and Kim Huong Tran, former trainee, ADM, share their perspectives.
With International Youth Day recently falling on 12 August, attention is turning to the experiences and aspirations of young people as they navigate an evolving world of work.
For young professionals entering the workforce, having more career options does not necessarily make the decision of where to stay any easier.
Salary and benefits remain important, as do career progression and flexibility. But beyond these factors, what makes someone feel that they are building a career rather than simply doing a job?
For Jingting Li, Talent Acquisition Director, APAC, ADM, the answer comes down to some fundamentals that can often be overlooked when discussing what younger generations want from work.
“There’s often a tendency to focus on what makes younger generations different,” she says, pointing to expectations around flexibility, career progression, and compensation.
While these expectations have evolved, Li believes the fundamentals of what people want from work are more similar across generations than they may appear.
Pay and career progression will always matter, but they’re rarely the only reasons people choose to stay.
People want to feel respected, trusted, and recognised for their contributions. They also want opportunities to keep learning and growing.
Most importantly, Li says, they want to know their work has purpose and that they are making a meaningful contribution.
For employers, this means retaining young talent may require looking beyond what is offered on paper and considering the experience employees have once they join.
From hiring graduates to developing future leaders
Hiring graduates may be the first step, but Li believes organisations need to think further ahead if they want to develop future leaders.
Structured training, coaching and mentorship can provide a strong foundation, but they are only part of the development journey.
Some of the most valuable learning, she says, comes when young professionals are given real opportunities to step up. This could mean owning meaningful pieces of work, working with different teams or solving problems where there is no obvious answer.
Managers still need to provide guidance, but Li says they should not necessarily remove every uncertainty from the process.
Some of the most valuable learning happens when individuals are trusted to navigate ambiguity, solve problems independently, and build confidence through experience.
These experiences can help young employees develop capabilities that go beyond their current role, including problem-solving, adaptability, and confidence.
It is also why development cannot stop at onboarding or formal training programmes, Li affirms.
Helping young professionals thrive starts from day one
For Li, creating an environment where young employees can thrive begins from the moment they join.
They need to feel welcomed and supported, while also being comfortable enough to ask questions. Managers have an important role to play in this, from setting clear expectations and providing regular feedback to creating space for open conversations.
At ADM, Li says a dedicated mentorship programme across APAC matches colleagues with leaders from different business units across the region. The programme gives young employees exposure to different perspectives and experiences, alongside opportunities to take on new responsibilities and continue learning.
Over time, these experiences can help employees build confidence and develop a clearer understanding of where they want to take their careers. However, it can be concurred that career development does not necessarily have to mean moving up the organisational ladder.
A career is not always defined by a promotion
One of the clearest signs that someone is building a career, to Li, is the ability to see how they are growing over time and understand the impact of their work.
That growth can take different forms. It could be taking on more responsibility, developing a new skill, leading a project, or overcoming a challenge that initially felt outside their comfort zone.
Purpose is another part of the picture.
Taking ADM's example, Li says being able to connect day-to-day work to a broader purpose can help employees understand the impact of their contributions.
When people can connect their daily work to a broader purpose while continuing to grow, they’re more likely to see a long-term career rather than simply doing a job.
For Kim Huong Tran, Business Intelligence and Commercial Excellence Lead, Animal Nutrition China, ADM, that sense of growth came through a series of experiences early in her career.
Tran was part of ADM’s Finance Trainee Programme from 2024 to 2026. When she was exploring opportunities after university, the programme’s rotational structure was what caught her attention.
I was searching for an opportunity to gain exposure to different parts of a business, rather than being limited to one role straight out of university.
The rotations gave her the chance to work across different areas of the business and understand how different functions connect. That exposure would later become particularly important in shaping how she approached problem-solving.
The projects that turned experience into confidence
During her final rotations with Global Business Services, supporting Ag Services & Oilseeds, and APAC Treasury, Tran worked on automation projects designed to streamline workflows across functions while improving collaboration and traceability.
But the experience was not simply about developing an automation solution. Working with different teams meant understanding how each function operated and what challenges employees faced in their day-to-day work.
Tran says the experience taught her that a solution is only useful if it addresses the problems that matter to the people using it.
Every team had different needs, so gathering continuous feedback was essential to refining the solutions and ensuring they delivered real value.
The automation solutions she helped develop continue to be used to support business processes across different functions.
Seeing those ideas adopted by the teams they were designed for gave Tran a sense of what it meant to contribute to something with a lasting impact. The projects also gave her opportunities to present to ADM’s Executive Council members and lead training sessions for colleagues across different functions.
For someone early in her career, those experiences provided a different kind of learning, she notes: the opportunity to communicate ideas, take ownership and build confidence in front of a wider audience.
They also encouraged Tran to keep exploring how technology could improve the way people work.
Learning from different generations and perspectives
Working alongside colleagues from different generations and backgrounds brought another lesson for Tran.
Rather than viewing different perspectives as a challenge, she came to see them as an important part of finding better solutions.
The best solutions often come from taking the time to understand and build on different ideas and experiences.
It also reinforced the importance of listening.
A solution that works well for one function may not necessarily work for another, particularly when teams have different priorities and ways of working.
For Tran, understanding those differences now comes before proposing a solution.
She believes it is important to first understand the team being supported, including how it works, the challenges it faces and what matters most to its people.
Only then, she says, can the right problems be identified and solutions developed that save time and effort in a meaningful and sustainable way.
When a job starts to feel like a career
That emphasis on understanding people and giving them room to contribute also comes through in Tran’s own definition of career growth.
For her, ownership has made the biggest difference.
Being given the space to think, create and launch something, and not just execute someone else’s plan, is when it stopped feeling like ‘a job’ and started feeling like I was building something meaningful.
Visibility also matters.
Recognition for her work, constructive feedback from leaders and colleagues, and open conversations with managers about her development helped Tran see how she was progressing.
Her career path after the Finance Trainee Programme offered another clear sign of that progress.
She was offered the role of Business Intelligence and Commercial Excellence Lead for Animal Nutrition China, a position that aligned with her skills, interests and career aspirations while giving her the opportunity to work overseas.
For Tran, the move showed that her leaders had taken the time to understand her strengths, capabilities and aspirations throughout the rotations.
It also demonstrated how exposure can help both employees and organisations identify where someone can make the strongest contribution.
Career growth does not only happen in the classroom
If Tran could change one thing about how organisations support early-career talent, she would like to see more opportunities for young employees to gain exposure beyond their immediate teams.
Sometimes people don’t discover what they’re really good at because they never get the chance to work on something different.
Cross-functional projects, short-term assignments or simply being included in conversations outside an employee’s usual scope can make a difference.
For Tran, much of career development comes from exposure, rather than training alone.
Li similarly believes organisations should be careful not to over-structure development.
Training, coaching and support remain important, but they should complement real-world experience rather than replace it.
As leaders, there can be a natural instinct to help young employees succeed by providing guidance and answers. Even so, Li believes growth often comes from having to navigate challenges, deal with uncertainty and learn from mistakes.
Rather than providing every answer, organisations can create opportunities for young professionals to think critically, solve problems and take ownership of outcomes.
The idea is simple: instead of always giving someone the answer, help them develop the skills to find it themselves.
Stay curious and keep learning
For International Youth Day, both Li and Tran return to a similar piece of advice for young professionals: stay curious.
Li says she would tell her younger self to ask questions and never be afraid to learn from others. Building relationships and connecting with senior leaders gave her exposure to different perspectives, industries and ways of thinking. At the same time, she says it is important to remain humble and open-minded, because there is always something new to learn.
Looking back, she would also have pushed herself further to explore new opportunities, build new skills and continue learning throughout her career. Experience and exposure may be valuable, but Li believes having a strong theoretical foundation is equally important.
For Tran, the advice is similarly straightforward.
“Stay curious and keep learning,” she says, adding that every skill picked up along the way can prove useful.
She also encourages young professionals to take on challenges that feel slightly uncomfortable. Those experiences, she says, are often the ones that help people grow the most.
Building a career one experience at a time
There may be no single formula for building a successful career, particularly for young professionals who are still discovering their strengths, interests and ambitions.
But the experiences of Li and Tran point to a common thread: a first job is a starting point, not necessarily the destination.
Meaningful work, opportunities to take ownership, exposure to different people and functions, and the space to keep learning can all shape what comes next. And if that first role turns out not to be the right fit, that does not mean the journey has gone off track. Sometimes, it simply means there is more to explore.
For employers, supporting early-career talent may be less about mapping out every step of someone's career and more about giving them the opportunities and space to discover what they can do.
For young professionals, the same can apply. You may not always know where your career is heading, and that is okay. Keep asking questions, stay curious, try something new and do not be afraid to explore a different path if the first one does not feel right. Sometimes, figuring out what you do not want can be just as valuable as finding what you do.
As we mark International Youth Day, here's wishing young professionals the confidence to explore, the curiosity to keep learning and the courage to build a career that feels right for them. Happy International Youth Day!
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