How to Take Control of Your Career
Date Added: September 10, 2008 06:08:55 PM
To reflect on if your current job is the best job to suit your personality, you need to conduct a personal evaluation.
Identify your character and interests and how they relate to your job. Your enthusiasm at work, your strengths and weakness will determine your performance in the work you have chosen.
When pursuing a career, you control your destiny. You have the power to succeed or fail. If you say, "I can't," you won't. If you say, "I can," you will. Assume responsibility by:
• Knowing yourself.• Understanding your goals.• Researching the job opportunities that fit into your goals.• Focusing in a specific industry on the kind of job you want.• Training or reaching the requirements for that job.• Going for it.
Once you have found your career and your job, there are six elements that contribute to your mastery of it. Their initials spell CIRCLE: commitment, integrity, responsibility, communication, love and energy.
You need to be committed to the organization and the person you are working for. Operating solely out of your own plan, you will never make it. You must make your team win.
Your sense of integrity must make you look at the organization, not your little slot in it.
Take responsibility for your organization, its progress, its reputation, and its defense if necessary.
If you really want to communicate, you will. What really supports the person you work for is communicating openly and honestly — not easy to do.
Love and energy. It has been said, "The only ones who will really be happy are those who have sought and found out how to serve."
TIPS:
Avoid sending your resume to a company's personnel department. Instead, send a cover letter and resume to the head of the department in which you wish to work. If it's a small company, a letter to the president may be even more effective. There is no perfect resume. It depends on the occupation. It is a vital step you must pass before being called for that first interview.
To be a more effective employee, make it your business to make your boss' job easier. Understand his responsibilities by examining his boss' demands on him. If you anticipate your boss' needs, you are a more effective worker.
Outside contacts can help you move up in your present firm by bringing you to the attention of top management and thus boost your visibility.
Rethink your career plan. Your aim to be at the top within two years might increase the size of your pay packet, but will you have the experience to make it work? List the skills you would like to have when you are at the top and all the different ways you can learn them. Win a promotion by documenting the savings achieved through your suggestions. New challenges don’t just come with new jobs. Seek them out for yourself and you won’t have time to be bored.
