Everyone dreams of having a great career but not many achieve. There are some fundamental facts that everybody should know about their career. Seems like small misstep can make you step into big career traps. These are the six career traps which I did like to mention and which you should not get into:
1) Having no plan: - This may lead to confusion. Failure is inevitable. It may derail your career. Plan out what you want to achieve. Have a balanced work-family life. Sometimes you need to have a backup plan also.
2) Lacking expectations: Meet up with different people, your supervisor and discuss what is expected of you. Lacking expectations can be the biggest career trap. If you are not told abut your duties and your position parameters, keep asking questions until you know what's expected of you.
3) Being a loner: The magic rule of a good career growth is relationships, or in other words, networking. Some people focus so hard on the job that they never get to interact with people in the other parts of the organization. If at all they interact, it may not be under friendly circumstances. Winning friends throughout the organization adds to additional benefits.
4) Taking indefinite decisions: - People who take tough decisions naturally stand out. People who take decisions indefinitely or uncertainly stand out for the wrong reasons. When you have a decision to make, focus on what might be an emergency. Frame out the job which is declared urgent and focus on the emergency.
5) Focusing too narrowly: - Make sure to develop a wide variety of applicable skills. With the developed new skills you can better market yourself so that an employer finds you or you can become one. Developing new skills can be like job insurance.
6) Covering up: - When you commit a mistake, the best thing is to take responsibility to fix it and not running away from it. Be honest to others about it and do not cover it up.
When you find yourself in a career trap, it may not be important how you fell in, but how you got out of it.
To read about the musings of a 22 year old and life of an aspiring handwriting analyst please visit http://www.kishorvr.com.
By Kishor V R
Friday, 30 January 2009
Career Change Ideas
7 Ways to Find Out What You Really Want to Do
You know, it is the lack of career change ideas that seems to keep many would-be career changers stuck.
One of the things that clients often say to me is:
I know I want to change careers, to do something different, but I just don't know what I want to do instead.
The problem is they are stuck in a habitual pattern of boxed-in thinking that prevents them from seeing the wealth of possibilities that are out there.
Would you like some tips to help you get out of that place and to help you to generate a range of new career ideas to explore? Then read on.
Tip 1 - Forget job titles
Job titles really inhibit your thinking. If I asked you to list all the jobs you could think of, you might come up with a couple of hundred before you ran dry. In reality there are thousands of jobs out there that you would never identify under your own steam, so forget the job title and focus instead on the key themes that are important for you in a job. What do you want your dream job to involve?
Tip 2 - List what you don't want to do
This is often quite easy to do if you are in a job you hate and it can be a very useful exercise. It helps you to focus on the aspects of a job that really drive you nuts and then also identify those that are annoying in your current job but actually you'd be prepared to put up with to some degree in a different situation. When you identify something as a no-no, ask if it would always be no under all circumstances. This will help you to avoid rejecting jobs in a knee-jerk way because they share similarities with your current role.
Tip 3 - List what you think you should want to do
What do you think your career should look like? What pressure are you putting on yourself to confirm to certain benchmarks (eg I must be earning a certain salary, I should be in a professional role, it must be something that other people will respect and admire me for). Just check with yourself whose rules you are following here. Who exactly says that your career must look like this? Is this really what you want or what other people say you should aspire to?
Tip 4 - List what you would do if anything were possible
Yes, you are allowed to take the brakes off here and create a big dream. Forget the constraints you put on yourself, wherever they come from. If your fairy godmother arrived to take you to the ball, what job or career would you ask her to line up for you as part of the deal?
Tip 5 - List what you would do if you gave yourself permission to say that you want it
So often, we limit the possibilities in our lives because we just don't allow ourselves to want something. Maybe you want to earn lots of money - but that seems too greedy. Maybe you want to have an easy, quiet job - but that seems too lazy. Maybe you want to set up your own business - but you can't because you have to think about so many other people in your life first. What do you need to give yourself permission to want to do?
Tip 6 - Reinvent yourself
If you could rewind the tape on your life and re-run it, what would you do? If you could dump all the stuff, the rules, the history that you have gathered on your journey through life to this point and travel light without the baggage, where would your journey take you? What would the new you look like and what work would this new person be doing? What does this tell you about what would really inspire you?
Tip 7 - Think big and think small
Your new career does not have to be something world changing and grand. If you want to change the world, great! Go ahead and build your new career around this big vision. But if you feel drawn to operating on a more local scale, that's fine too. Small changes can be just as transforming for your career and your life as big ones, so don't be fooled into thinking that bigger is necessarily better. Career change success is about finding what feels right for you.
So take some time to think about your career change with these 7 tips in mind - and by time I mean days, weeks, maybe even months if necessary. Changing career is a big step, so allow yourself the time and space to really think it through.
And while these tips are beginning to free up your thinking about new career possibilities, I invite you to take a look around the How To Change Careers website where you will find a host of career change ideas to get you moving, and you can also download my free ebook 11¾ Ways To Kick Start Your Career Change http://www.how-to-change-careers.com/kick-start-your-career-change.html
From Cherry Douglas - Your Career Change Guide
You know, it is the lack of career change ideas that seems to keep many would-be career changers stuck.
One of the things that clients often say to me is:
I know I want to change careers, to do something different, but I just don't know what I want to do instead.
The problem is they are stuck in a habitual pattern of boxed-in thinking that prevents them from seeing the wealth of possibilities that are out there.
Would you like some tips to help you get out of that place and to help you to generate a range of new career ideas to explore? Then read on.
Tip 1 - Forget job titles
Job titles really inhibit your thinking. If I asked you to list all the jobs you could think of, you might come up with a couple of hundred before you ran dry. In reality there are thousands of jobs out there that you would never identify under your own steam, so forget the job title and focus instead on the key themes that are important for you in a job. What do you want your dream job to involve?
Tip 2 - List what you don't want to do
This is often quite easy to do if you are in a job you hate and it can be a very useful exercise. It helps you to focus on the aspects of a job that really drive you nuts and then also identify those that are annoying in your current job but actually you'd be prepared to put up with to some degree in a different situation. When you identify something as a no-no, ask if it would always be no under all circumstances. This will help you to avoid rejecting jobs in a knee-jerk way because they share similarities with your current role.
Tip 3 - List what you think you should want to do
What do you think your career should look like? What pressure are you putting on yourself to confirm to certain benchmarks (eg I must be earning a certain salary, I should be in a professional role, it must be something that other people will respect and admire me for). Just check with yourself whose rules you are following here. Who exactly says that your career must look like this? Is this really what you want or what other people say you should aspire to?
Tip 4 - List what you would do if anything were possible
Yes, you are allowed to take the brakes off here and create a big dream. Forget the constraints you put on yourself, wherever they come from. If your fairy godmother arrived to take you to the ball, what job or career would you ask her to line up for you as part of the deal?
Tip 5 - List what you would do if you gave yourself permission to say that you want it
So often, we limit the possibilities in our lives because we just don't allow ourselves to want something. Maybe you want to earn lots of money - but that seems too greedy. Maybe you want to have an easy, quiet job - but that seems too lazy. Maybe you want to set up your own business - but you can't because you have to think about so many other people in your life first. What do you need to give yourself permission to want to do?
Tip 6 - Reinvent yourself
If you could rewind the tape on your life and re-run it, what would you do? If you could dump all the stuff, the rules, the history that you have gathered on your journey through life to this point and travel light without the baggage, where would your journey take you? What would the new you look like and what work would this new person be doing? What does this tell you about what would really inspire you?
Tip 7 - Think big and think small
Your new career does not have to be something world changing and grand. If you want to change the world, great! Go ahead and build your new career around this big vision. But if you feel drawn to operating on a more local scale, that's fine too. Small changes can be just as transforming for your career and your life as big ones, so don't be fooled into thinking that bigger is necessarily better. Career change success is about finding what feels right for you.
So take some time to think about your career change with these 7 tips in mind - and by time I mean days, weeks, maybe even months if necessary. Changing career is a big step, so allow yourself the time and space to really think it through.
And while these tips are beginning to free up your thinking about new career possibilities, I invite you to take a look around the How To Change Careers website where you will find a host of career change ideas to get you moving, and you can also download my free ebook 11¾ Ways To Kick Start Your Career Change http://www.how-to-change-careers.com/kick-start-your-career-change.html
From Cherry Douglas - Your Career Change Guide
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