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Advancing Your Career
You're trying to
advance your career,
but the business world is passing you by
Here Are Some Reasons Why
By Joe Hodowanes, Career Strategy Advisor
Of J.M. Wanes & Associates
www.jmwanes.com
Reason #1 - A career is a passage and should begin with a
destination in mind. There is truth in the notion that if you do not know where
you are going, no wind is the right wind. One of the most valuable lessons I
learned through the years is that both your destination and the oceans you are
sailing keep moving, so you must be able to adjust your course with agility and
confidence. As you consider a career move, it is wise to remember some logical
principles. The most important is based on Economics 101: You are required to
make a sale to succeed in your search. Start by determining what you have to
sell, why someone should buy it, what it is worth and who is in a position to
buy it.
Reason #2 - Don’t even think for a moment about picking a new career or
advancing your present career based on current headlines. Instead, ask yourself
what you can get passionate about. While the headlines on recent layoff
announcements are pretty shocking, a glance at the fine print should offer
relief. Most reductions won’t be achieved by widespread layoffs but will rely
instead on attrition or early retirement, and most reductions are being spread
over a number of years. On top of that, layoffs reflect various factors, not
just a lagging economy. Some firms, such as Motorola, are responding to the
slowdown, but a great many, like GE, are positioning themselves by expanding in
new markets and pulling back in others. Then there are firms like
DamilerChrysler, for which restructuring was long overdue, and AOL Time Warner,
which has just merged and is looking to eliminate redundancies. The dot-com
sector also continues to evolve. And even though Web firms have taken on a
larger-than-life presence in the news and capital markets, their actual impact
on the labor market is quite small. By one estimate, 900,000 people are
currently employed in the sector, which means that if every dot-com in the
country disappeared overnight, the unemployment rate would jump to a mere five
percent - still far below what was considered full employment only five years
ago. If there is one marketed change that I have witnessed in the last year, it
is this, job seekers and employers are less impulsive. Both sides are taking a
closer look at what they are doing. A year ago, job candidates where jumping to
new jobs and taking such big risks. Not now. There is a lot of due diligence
going on. And there’s something else to consider. While layoff announcements at
big firms have been making headlines, thousands of small and medium-sized firms
across the country are still hiring.
Reason #3 - Anyone thinking about starting up an office romance needs to
go into it with their eyes open and may eventually have to decide whether they
value their lover more than their job. Even if an employer never says anything
about the relationship, it may undermine the employees’ opportunities for
advancement. When a young bay area attorney had a yearlong fling with a legal
assistant in his office, he didn’t think much about the effect it would have on
his career. But after the affair ended, he discovered his dalliances didn’t do
much to move him through the ranks. “I found out years later that the partners
definitely looked down upon it. It was looked at as most inappropriate,” he
said. “They said, “Is this guy an idiot? Doesn’t he have any sense?”
Reason #4 - Prematurely disclosing to your current employer that you
received a new job offer is just plain stupid. When trying to advance your
career, you must know when not to speak. Ethically, employees have absolutely
no responsibility to prematurely disclose a new job offer. Too often, we
confuse ethics with guilt. For many employees, companies become like families,
we spend a lot of our time there, and we rely on them to fulfill many of our
financial, intellectual, and emotional needs. But prematurely disclosing to
your boss that you are considering a position outside the company will always
place your loyalty in question. As long as you don’t lie, cheat or steal, it is
perfectly professional to take necessary steps to advance your career.
Reasons #5 - Ships operate the way people ought to. Why? Because ships
always have a destination. How many people do you know who can say the same
thing? The notion of “keeping your options open” is a misguided approach to
job-hunting, managing a career and, especially, resume writing. A prospective
employer should know in the first two to three lines of your resume, what type
of position you’re looking for, and in the first 10 to 15 lines, the greatest
benefits you can bring to the position. Having two or three resumes with
different targets still allows for an effective, manageable search. If you’re
unable to narrow your target, focus on assessing your skills and career
research, not writing your resume.
Reason #6 - Entrepreneurship is not always viewed as a positive. Job
seeking candidates are often screened out at the earliest stage of the hiring
process if they list on their resume that they have been entrepreneurs. Many
employers distrust entrepreneurs because they’re the type of person who is
extremely self-willed. They’re accustomed to giving orders, not taking them.
Many are viewed as wanting to impose conditions, not submit to them. Employer’s
wonder: Why are you coming to us? Did you fail to make it on your own? Oh, you
made a lot of money, did you? Then you’re no longer driven. How can we trust
the quantified achievements on your resume if you reported them yourself? By
changing a few titles and making other edits, you can let readers of your
resume assess your worth without triggering a bias towards you
Reason #7 - Work to an agenda, not a schedule. Over time, the most
important skill for advancing your career is learning how to work to an agenda
than to a schedule. A successful businessperson always kills more than one bird
with one stone. Figure out what needs to happen on a broad scale, and then find
ways to make it happen.
Reasons #8 - Careers need consistency. A career needs consistency,
especially when the world around you is changing so fast. Most companies change
priorities with the financial winds. Don’t be surprised or take it personally
when their goals start to diverge from yours. The key is to reconnect with a
group of like-minded people. Consistency brings you industry-wide respect. And
as you mature through different phases of your career, it opens new and
unexpected horizons. Jumping from fad to fad to get promoted quickly is neither
satisfying nor sustainable.
Reason #9 - Follow your heart. No matter how high your career registers
on the conventional charts, you’ve got to listen to your heart. Almost anyone
who devotes themselves to a given vocation, and who pours their love and energy
into that activity, develops a certain expertise in the field: The vocation
opens itself up to him/her in terms of its truths and principles, bends itself
to your imagery and ideas, becomes your friend, building up the person as they
invest themselves in their chosen work. Any work can serve this purpose, so
that whatever it is one chooses to do, if done with the right attitude and
proper affection it becomes a joyful activity that has the potential of
becoming a long-term career.
Reason #10 - Be willing to pay the price that success demands. There is a
principle at the heart of humanity: Life is not what you find; it is what you
create. And so it is with you. You are given an intellect; you can use it or
let it stagnate. You are given a body; you can keep it fit or let it
deteriorate. You are given 365 days in a year; you can use them or waste them.
At work, you are given an opportunity; you can turn it into an adventure or let
it descend into drudgery. You can succeed, or you can fail. The choice is
yours. The one thing you can’t do is succeed without effort.
Joe Hodowanes, a career strategy adviser in Tampa, Florida, offers a free resume
and career analysis. Fax your resume to (813) 936-0201 or email it to
jmwanes@jmwanes.com For questions, call Joe at (813) 936-0091 or visit
www.jmwanes.com on the Web. All Job Search Advisor articles on this website are the property of
www.jmwanes.com
(J.M. Wanes & Associates). You may download
a copy for personal use. Redistribution without permission is strictly prohibited.
© 2005 J.M. Wanes & Associates.
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