Career Planning, Career Management, Job Search, Resumes, Interviews
In India FIITJEE across 150 Test Centers, nation’s premier institute for IIT-JEE training will be conducting FIITJEE Talent Reward Exam on Sunday 25th December 2011.
FIITJEE- Nation’s premier institute for IIT-JEE training will be conducting FIITJEE Talent Reward Exam on Sunday 25th December 2011. (more…)
Changing Industry is a well thought process
Tips on How to get into a Job in a different industry
Looking for some expert tips on How to get into a Job in a different industry? Help is here if you want to change the industry you are working in and make a career in a different industry.
When applying for such a position in an industry different than yours keep in mind some important tips …
Write your own career path
Want to write your own Career Path? Here is some help from CareerCola.com on writing Career Path.
Career Path or Career Planning are much abused words in HR lexicon – many times used by HR practitioners to fulfill their agenda. You can not leave the important aspects of YOUR career in the hands of some “HR practitioner” whom you barely know and who may not even know anything more about you except your name and designation. You have to take control and write your own career path.
Yes – organization have set paths based on concrete hierarchy. This makes the options available to you limited. Organizations also are lazy – late to react to changing demands and hence they are always late to change the career paths, roles and organization structure – most of the times unless they are forced to do. If you accept the paths given to you by Human Resources or your supervisor – you are doing injustice to yourself. You have to make your own – based on your goals and dreams. If later you find they match a path in organizations book – OK. If or if not – you have your own path.
Here are few recomemnded steps – if you dont like them find your own..
- Start with end in mind – what is your goal in career? What you want to achieve?
- Identify where you are
- Note down various paths to reach that goal
- Select the best scenario and make it your plan A
- Select the second and third best to make Plan B and Plan C (life is not predictable always)
- Now check if your plans have any similarity with organizations Career Path
- Discuss them with your mentor, supervisor and HR and formalize
Remember – you have to write you career path otherwise someone else will write it!
Liking yourself and doing things to please yourself does not mean that you are selfish. It does not mean that you are egoistic. What it means is that you can be a better Mother, Father friend, coworker, employee or spouse than someone who lacks confidence.
Here are our recommendations for boosting your self confidence
Self Discovery: Self discovery will lead you to know about your self and accept it as it is. You answer questions like:
Acknowledge accomplishments: Now prepare a list of positive achievements and personality characteristics. Forget the negatives and just concentrate on positives.
Prepare yourself: Your preparation will give you you knowledge, courage, control and strength to achieve your goals. Try to maintain your focus on what you want to do. Look ahead and keep your energy focused on the challenge.
Perform and Persist: Start action on your plan and keep doing it till you reach the goal. Achieving goals takes work and persistence. Do not stop midway and persist – that is the key.
Here are some Do’s and Don’ts
Don’ts
Dos
Building self confidence will go a log way for you to be successful in your life. Following these small tips over a period of time will help you believe in yourself and reach your goals.
If you thhik you can – you will!
How you feel about yourself? Answer to that questions decides how you deal with the world around you.
If you are confident then your confidence gives you the courage to set high expectations from yourself and others, to take risk, to grow and prosper, and to reach the goals you want.
If you lack self confidence then you take jobs that are relatively easy setting lower expectations from yourself and others, you avoid risks and do stuff tha will not ask for too much. Those lacking self confidence may be losing out on opportunities for growth and prosperity.
How will I know How Confident I am?
How confident are you? Here is small questionnaire to determine your level of self confidence. The results may help upi in improving your self confidence. To take the questionnaire – just answer “yes” or “no” to the following.
So now you have responded to all the questions in either “Yes” or “No”. Count all the “Yes” and for each “Yes” give yourself “1″ mark and add them togather.
If you have scored 12 or higher: A score of 12 or higher indicates that you love, like and respect yourself. You have high degree of self confidence. You are content and you accept your positive and negative qualities. You are very enthusiastic about life.
If you have scored 7 to 11 Points: This indicates that while you are confident in some areas at the same time you are lacking in few others. This may also mean that you may be a perfectionist – who sets very high standards in life which result in feeling inadequate about oneself.
If you have 6 or lower points: This indicates you have a low self confidence. You may be lacking the zing in life. Your confidence level may be low due to the experience you had in life.
If you feel that you are high in self confidence despite the low score – may be your mood when you have answered this questionnaire was down.
If you are lacking or are low on self confidence – you can change this. There are ways to improve your self confidence. We will be talking about this in our next post.
The era of internet and Web 2.0 is full of Work from Home offers. Work from home now is not only an accepted norm for housewives but is also regular professional are attracted towards this due the advantage of flexibility it offers.
However most of them (work from home sites) ask for a registration fee. And like any other business – this business is also full of players (read cheats) who just collect upfront fee (by promising you very high earnings while working from home) and vanish.
Many people want to know how to work from home for FREE, without paying any fees. You can make money while working from home, but it will take dedication, hard work, and creativity. And you can make money subsequently and reach your goal without spending money. here is what steps you should take in this career alternative of working from home:
1. Find your niche area: There are legitimate opportunities to work at home with no upfront fees. We recommend you to Research the options and find something which you are REALLY interested in. There are opportunities can be for freelance writing, freelance editing, freelance design, freelance web development, freelance teaching, freelance customer service, freelance technical support etc. There are other companies that are even for freelance secretary (working virually).
2. Research work source: Once done your research and identified an area to work in identify the people who will need your service. Complete as much research as you can to be sure the site is legitimate. There should be no fees involved to “get information”. If the site is legitimate, you will able to begin for FREE. There are many scams out there. Check out scambusters website link below. Some of the reputed sites which are online freelance marketplace are:
www.elance.com
www.rentacoder.com
www.mondayworks.com
3. Register at the site. If you choose to start an at home career, sign up with the website to find out more information on what the company is looking for. Remember never to give any financial or credit card information to sites. Free sites never ask for this information.
4. Check for available work and show your intention to work on thes projects. of required bid for the projects.
5. if awarded – do the work. Once you decide on what you want to do, do the work. For writing, obviously you will need to write. If it is customer service you wish to do, you will have to dedicate time to answer the phone calls.
6. Stay focused, dedicated, and patient. Most legitimate at home jobs are not get rich quick plans. You may not show any significant income for a while, but as you learn the ins and outs of the business you will start to earn more money.
Remember the purpose of you coming in Work from Home bandwagon – then be prepared to give it a long shot. Give the time to this and see results.
Have questions or want to share your views on work from home – just write writing comments to this post.
To be successful in any domain of life, you need to be different from other. In this world of me too products – people always prefer products or services that stand apart from others. We go a retail store and out of various offerings we always try to pickup the stuff which stands apart. This also applies to getting recognition on at work. In the career also you need to stand apart from the people around you.
The marketing experts use a terminology called USP – that is Unique Selling Proposition to describe a feature of product which is its unique proposition to be sold. The same way as an employee we need to have our PUSP (Professional Unique Selling Proposition) – something that makes you stand out from the crowd and this is a very important aspect which may decide your fate on the job.
All senior managers look for someone who can be their trusted soldier. Depending on these few trusted employees (on whom they depend for operational aspects) the managers try to rise up in any company. One of the reason you see many managers when leaving the job they tend to take their team also.
You may be highly skilled or qualified but of you are not visible to senior managers – you are nowhere. There are many ways to become visible in organization but the key is to position yourself in a place where these senior managers will notice you. Here are some of the ways to be visible:
Senior expect to recognize a rising star before they recognized by others in organization. The first step for this is to have a PUSP – professional unique selling proposition that you can talk about to show a potential new manager that you are different to the people around you.
Once you have identified the industry, or area that you want to work in, you need to brand yourself, be clear about your professional unique selling proposition, and practice selling yourself to the people around you who can help you get to the position you are aspiring to.
Note that positioning yourself is not a one day job – you need to do this day in & day out in your career. The dynamics of a successful career demands that you compete in you career every day – you compete when you go for a job interview, you compete daily for the best positions, promotion and pay rise.
So next time when you are in a position to speak in front of one of these managers will you take that positioning step. Yes and keep doing that always? Having an elevator pitch – a GE way in which you are prepared with small conversation pitched (small enough to get completed in elevator) which leave the desired positioning in senior manager’s mind.
Now let’s take an example of how positioning must have helped some of the industry leaders. Mr. Ramadorai CEO of leading software services company TCS has started off as a Trainee in the company and has worked his way to the position of CEO. This would not have been possible without the right positioning he made for himself ever since he was a middle level manager. This includes the way he positioned himself in the right area, networked with the right people, let them know where he wanted to go, and when the right positions came along. Earlier he was America head which is followed by being COO second only to visionary Mr. F C Kohli (one of the founders of TCS). What we need to notice here is that he was prepared for the position, the management at TCS knew he was prepared this position, and he himself right from start knew what he wanted, and he was an undisputed choice for the role.
Unless you put it in practice, then only you may realize the power of PUSP – Professional Unique Selling Proposition. I invite readers to share their experiences of own or people around them. Just add to the comments on this post.
Indian workers has got the taste of globalization yesterday from none other than its home grown leading private airline Jet airways. Jet Airways have laid off more than 900 of its employees in one single day and have plans to make this figure above 1800 within next two days.
Till now in India the layoff by an Indian company were an hush hush affair. The layoff or pink slips (as they are called in western world) were thought to be a way of only companies from rest of world. This event was unlike the earlier layoffs which has been splashed in media like anything.
On the other side of world amidst the economic recession more than 750,000 jobs have disappeared from the U.S. economy this year. The workers face the prospect of plenty more layoffs to come as a continuing credit crunch and weak consumer demand hamper firms trying to maintain payrolls.
Now the big question before all of us workers is – “How safe is my job”? The answer is tricky but not difficult. You can now look for early warnings indicators for approaching layoffs. Here are seven signs (EWAs) that may signal your position is on the line.
(1) Other got fired in your company: If others are losing their jobs you may too, even if your boss says otherwise. Prepare yourself for that call to corner office and being handed over the pink slip. Note that in bad times even management may not have sense of things which may be affecting the business real time. In a globalized economy situations change rapidly. This does not mean that people are telling lies but them may not be aware genuinely. It may be the case of missing information, or circumstances change.
The basic pint is that you need to be aware of the possibility of a layoff. Workers at greatest risk of layoffs may be those who were most recently hired (although a lot depends on company policy). This was the case with Jet Airways layoff above. Other targets are workers who aren’t getting the job done. Middle management and highly paid top managers are also targets. The workers who are contract are also among the first to go.
(2) Freeze on New Hiring: Vanishing job postings (internal or external) and vanishing referral schemes are also send a layoff signal. You should look at whether colleagues are taking on more or less work, and whether some are being asked or told to leave.
The sequence of disappearance is typically started with the newly created or budgeted positions that have not been filled which are the first to go, then replacement positions that used to be posted and have disappeared, and then come the retirements that seem to be welcomed by management and are not filled.
(3) Training budgets cut: Even large companies may cut training budgets, a red flag that financial concerns could lead to layoffs. While there are certain critical initiatives or projects that need to go forward if a company wants to keep up production, workers should watch out when project spending slows.
From an employee’s standpoint, anytime they see an organization cutting back on its spending and cutting back on activities, as well as staff or initiatives around them, they need to think through the details and figure out at what point does it reach my position.
(4) New projects and events vanishing from scene: The new IT project or budgeted initiative has just vanished and no one talks about it now. Well, that is an indication of slowdown and probable cut in employees who are normally required for new projects.
(5) Office Grapevine: Conventional wisdom calls for taking office gossip with a pinch of salt. But sometimes it makes sense to listen to what your co-workers are saying and doing. It makes sense to notice what the talk is and to notice how people’s responsibilities or jobs are being redefined.
(6) Company is missing targets quarter after quarter: While some management may be less than forthcoming about missed targets for financial performance, workers can investigate a company’s health by checking out the budget. A major sign of approaching layoffs is a business that isn’t performing well. Especially at publicly traded companies, performance is critical, because firms that don’t perform to an expected level, even during recessionary times, will be forced to cut back.
(7) What your top management is saying in public: The top management speeches and statements in public are sometimes indicators of coming dangers. Like in case of Jet airways – a stress deal with Kingfisher airlines is announced a couple of days earlier and this followed by retrenchments.
Whatever may be the reason workers all over the world need to face recession and have to secure their jobs. Making note of early warning indicators may help in some cases.
In a comment to my post on networking “Gabriel Monge-Franco” asked:
“What if you’re new to the field/industry — a recent college graduate who knows nobody perhaps — then what? How do you start networking?”
In this note I will be covering some starters for recent college graduates, where they can start networking.
Internship: Most graduates have option to attend internships. Whether paid or volunteer – the internships offer a great chance to come in contact with people in your area of choice. I will advise students to chose internships not on the basis of earning potential but on the basis of networking potential. A sound network developed during the internship will go a long way in your career to become foundation of your professional network.
Networking with senior batches: A batch which has passed from your college a year before you will also be ideal target for initial networking. Usually they have first hand information about various companies and their employment procedures. And they will be a good start point in finding a contact in that company.
Networking through your faculty: Your college faculty will normally have good contacts in industry and other academic institutions. They may lead you to right contacts in some situations.
Online Professional Networking: You can use websites like www.linkedin.com, www.xing.com and like to start your online professional networking. Even social networking sites like www.orkut.com or www.facebook.com also have a lot of potential for professional networking.
I would invite other readers to share their experience on networking while in college.
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