cvservices.net : a better career : next steps going places?

By now the salary gap has opened wide. Some people make European Marketing Manager by their mid 30s and some people are still HR Assistants at 30. Some people have got lucky with their employment sector, the stratospheric progress of the company, being spotted by the right seniors or reaping the rewards of generous training and incentive schemes. Some people are paying the penalty now for lack of ambition and focus earlier and some are stuck on low salaries because they have remained too loyal.

how is your career coming along?

Now is the time to position yourself accurately for a better future, not one to rely on career drift. Whatever your personal circumstance there are a few little projects that cannot harm your future if you have them running in the background.

do you have a coherent plan?

Between the first appointment and the take-off point can be so many varied scenarios that it is almost impossible to generalise. There are, however, some lessons to be learned from successful styles of career management...

what else might you be doing?

The fantasy days are over

This is time for an honest appraisal of what your career has achieved so far and here are some indices on which to measure the progress...

Lucky or not?

Major career progression can be achieved in all sorts of ways. Have you been assisted by fate, circumstances, people, mergers or changes in the economic climate ?

If so, have you appreciated your good fortune and would you recognise it coming round again?

If not, why have you missed the boat, been overlooked, been in the wrong places at the wrong time? There will be a pattern in there if you look at your history...

What more might you do to be ready for lady luck to strike again in your career. What patterns are you ready to leave behind and what more successful habits are you looking to acquire?
Able or not?

Are you clear what your strengths are, and which could be most valuable to future employers.

Do you have any doubts about your ability, knowledge or personal style that you could admit to? Are there any steps you could be taking to strengthen your position?

Have you asked the people you work with for an honest assessment of your contribution?
Clear or not?

At this stage, adding stuff to your amateurish student CV is simply not good enough; you need an objective analysis of your career so far, told as a compelling narrative that sets the context, describes your working methods, highlights your achievements and points towards a glowing future.

This is the work of several iterations over time. If you don=t have a smashing CV ready in case you happen to meet with destiny, maybe you=d better start work on one...

do you have a coherent plan?

Work should be good for you

There are workplaces where the tone is one of dedication, creativity, commitment and even underlying joy. There are places where coming to work is a pleasure and there are roles within those environments that stretch and satisfy the people who occupy them.

If this is not where you are then it may be time for a change, a well-structured career management project, minimising the risk, playing to your proven abilities and lifting you out from where you are currently trapped. We are all ugly ducklings until we meet the rest of the swans. We are all frustrated until we start to run with our true destiny.

Clear and achievable goals

Stagnation often comes from confusion, which is overwhelming, which piles up more questions than get answered. Have you sat down, recently, to diagram and prioritise your life goals and your work goals, setting measurable targets and timelines for yourself?
Knowledge and skills

The tendency is always towards complexity and specialisation. Just as Marketing and HR have their postgraduate training requirements and the MBA or MSc in Organisational Management dominates the horizon, there are already advanced courses in online training and Internet management and there will be more. Continued professional development matters to potential employers and can often be leveraged from the budget of your current employer, so do you have anything interesting lined up?
Market information

Is your analysis of what's out there a matter of random forays on the Internet or are you seriously assembling useful information about companies you might like to work for, role transitions that would be possible from your existing track record, trends in business pattern where you can see yourself making a contribution...

Planning is synthesis of what you want + what is actually out there and change is most effective when inspired new combinations become possible.

what else might you be doing?

Three more habits of successful people

Visibility and vision

There is no doubt whatsoever that people with clear vision and talent that manifests in original and profitable ideas will have successful careers, providing they make sure they benefit as well as others.

Most of us are operating well below speed in terms of unleashing this kind of power, which often involves some minor and relatively obvious enhancement within or between already existing systems. Look around you.

Vision losers give their ideas away in half-baked form to someone else who packages them and takes the credit. You need to be visible when you share your vision: you need to take it to the right person, not necessarily within your own organisation.
Personal style

Some people make the moves by being nasty, aggressive, vicious bastards that employers would like to be rid of and new employers are fooled by. Many people are actually under utilised in their work because the vampires steal the limelight.

This is a tough issue, but it does impact heavily on career outcomes and you might ask yourself: is my integrity in play at work? Is my natural way of being and creativity given full expression? Do I get to do things the way I feel most comfortable and the way that I know works best?

You may have set a style in this job, as you once developed a new persona for your new school. Are you ready to change it and would a move give you a chance to be a whole new you?
Being a Human

Maybe you should be seeking out the new generation of less macho, more co-operative, more organic organisation, and perhaps at future interviews you could factor self-expression into the pay, status, role, company prospects equation...

For now, make your networking purposeful; create links with people you meet on business; keep in touch; have your ear to the email and track the progress of rival organisations. Find out from friends and contacts if what happens in your office is how it has to be, to give yourself some perspective on how you would like it to be.

Management styles and business objectives come and go but core human values remain important. It is finally being noticed, out there, that the human organisation is tending to become the successful organisation.

These topics are covered in greater depth in CV Sage with examples and exercises.
Take a look!