Reviewing How to Plan your Career
In a previous article we specifically identified eight steps to help
you plan the short-term aspect of your career development. To
summarize, they included helping you discover who you are so that you
really know what kind of job will satisfy your inner needs and creating a
life story that tells not only your skill sets, but equally important
what personal characteristics you bring to any job. It also involved
distilling down to a succinct description of who you are, learning how to find the job
you want, the way to market yourself and the means to negotiate a good
deal for your self (painlessly). Left unsaid from this eleven-step
career plan were the last three steps, all of them focusing on the long-term, namely keeping objectivity on the job, planning for a better job within your company and casting an eye outside of your present organization.
Keeping Objectivity on the Job
While job searching may be an emotional experience, we all know that
being in the heat of the job itself brings on its own emotional
challenges too. They may stem from an inability to complete
assignments as expected, working too many hours, having an unreasonable
boss, enmity with peers, having a dud working for you,
mis-communications, poor rapport with suppliers etc. At the end of a
tiring day, many of us come home to vent on a spouse or partner who,
feeling somewhat helpless offers impractical, but meant-to-be
sympathetic advice of: “I would punch that guy in the nose.” Or “I dont
understand why you stay there and put up with that abuse.” While such
comments are intended to be supportive, you are unlikely to act on
suggestions that are that far a-field from reality. Then, how can we
defuse our emotions?
Find a mentor, friend or
coach, someone who understands the business environment, has seen and
experienced these sorts of circumstances, and knows how to react to
them. As soon as an awkward situation develops for you in your
workplace, you should be able to share it with this coach, who will help
you search for the best answers. Perhaps you can make a swap: “Hey Charlie, you be my coach and I will be your coach.” Ideally, the person will nudge you to find your own solutions.
That is, try to have someone to turn to in order to get through the
day-to-day turmoil on the job. Relieve your stress by realizing the fact
that two heads are better than one, especially when the second person
can be objective.
We are starting here with the assumption that you know what kind of
employment is good for you based on actualization of the aforementioned
eight career planning steps.
Planning New Horizons within your Job
While you may be heavily committed to getting the right amount of
sausages out of the sausage factory each day, enshrouded by 35-degree
steamy temperature, that is, surrounded by pressure at every turn, you
do need to pause to look ahead as well.
Where do you want to go within this company, especially, what is the
next step? As before, we recommend you have an objective person at your
side and preferably one experienced in assisting this way. Whether you
enlist the aid of a friend or a professional career coach, you do need to take the time to look ahead. A responsible advisor will help you explore
the options far ahead of you, but more urgently direct you towards the
immediate next step for you in your career, but within your present
enterprise.
Dont just look in your own department; look in other areas too.
Often opportunities exist in the company that you would otherwise never
have envisaged, if you had stuck only to your local turf. Conduct brief
information meetings
with key managers just to get an idea of what is happening elsewhere.
Not only may you learn about activities relevant to your career
aspirations, but also you may be surprised to unearth a job opportunity
that fits you to a T, and is one that is not even advertised.2 You can
actually walk right into a new, better job.
Looking beyond your Company
It pays to look outside your present company for opportunities, if
nothing else, just to keep your own employer honest with you. And as you
might expect, we recommend you have a non-family advisory person
involved to keep you focused on the technical aspect and away from the
emotional aspects. Of course, if your present work situation is
untenable and your mentor agrees with you that it is so, you must look
outside anyway.
The means to do this is NOT to job hunt, but to conduct information
meetings. An information meeting is a 20-minute get together where you
ask a manager or an executive: How does the world of XYZ activities look
from where you sit now? What are its ups and its downs? Since these
meetings might be related to your present work, they can be helpful
towards it (even if not in the job search, itself).
The key to success is for you to develop a consistent timetable, such
as one or two information meetings per month, and stick to it. Through
this process you will learn and will develop a renewed awareness – a
sort of overview of your industry and how you fit into it.
While face-to-face interviews are preferable, the nature of your work
may make telephone information meetings the only viable option. As you
keep exploring, a plethora of useful information will be yours. And we
believe, an improved job opportunity will flow out of it.
0 comments:
Post a Comment