Write your own career path

Want to write your own Career Path? Here is some help from CareerCola.com on writing Career Path.

Why write your own 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.

Never accept the paths given to you – make your own

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.

How to write your own career 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!

Mistakes are a great way to learn!

We all make mistakes at some or other stage in our careers. there is nothing wrong in making mistakes. What however is wrong that we do not learn from our mistakes. To rectify these mistakes there is a need to understand that in which areas we may have been going wrong. And then we need to start making the right decisions now. To avoid these career mistakes, you will need a paradigm shift. You may have to unlearn the way you have been taught about work.

Here is a list of commmon mistakes that people in their careers:

Thinking that Working hard means working long hours
People tend to think that these two are same – working long hours means we are working hard. Well working long hours for delivering results without understanding that there is more to get results than the hard work approach. Working smart is the need of hour and not working hard.

Failing to set the goals
If you wait for your boss to set your goals you may be making a mistake. Not setting the accountable goals for yourself and measuring yourself on an ongoing basis is a prescription for failure.

Not leveraging your communication skills at work
Communication is all about modern organizations. If you do not know the art and science of communication in your job – you are at risk. Although you are paid for your skills and experience but how the others will know that unless you present them to the world. Hence your communication and presentation skills are your biggest assets at work and you must leverage them

Failing to network is sure a recipe of failure
The best jobs and opportunities are there very near to you. If you do not understand the importance of networking within and outside the company to gain access to the right people (and hence right opportunities) and not knowing how to network – you are cooking for failure.

Not making yourself visible
Making yourself visible means crating your uniques value proposition for organizationa d making that visible to key people. If you are not doing this – you do not exist. Your value needs to be visible to the people in your company who matter on a regular basis.

Not being an Intra-prenuere
You have to manage your career as a business. You have to think like an entreprenure within the organization. Then only your true potential will come out and your value will be unlocked. If you feel yourself as a business and understand the need to “Brand yourself as a Business” – there will be success around the corner.

So next time you are out in organization check if you making any of these common mistakes and make a concious habit of analyzing your every move against them.

It is better learning from mistakes of others than doing them yourself.

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.

I remember looking for a job just before I finished graduate school. I poured over lists of companies that were located where I wanted to live, and I dreamed a lot about what it might be like to work in different industries.

I was reminded of when several my friends graduated with MBA degrees the preceding year and the goals they had.

One handsome, tall fellow wanted to become a vice president of an airline. I asked him why, and he told me that you could become a vice president of an airline at an earlier age than in other industries. Smiling, he also mentioned that as a single man he liked that there more unmarried young women working for airlines than could be met in most other industries.

A married couple had more modest ambitions: to get jobs in the same city that would provide opportunities for challenging careers. If the city was a nice place to live, that was an extra benefit. When both gained jobs in Seattle, Washington, they were thrilled.

Another man had spent a lot of time as a sailor on a nuclear submarine before graduate school: Any job that didn’t involve working underwater was welcome to him.

All of that career planning sounds pretty reasonable, doesn’t it? Little did I know that we were aiming very low.

A recent MBA graduate helped me see that much higher goals can be set. It was quite an eye opener. Let me tell you his story.

Ramesh Venkatraman was born in a beautiful village in a part of southern India that is well known for entrepreneurship in exporting products around the world. Accompanying his father on professional trips expanded his geographic horizons at a young age. His early schooling, college, and graduate studies were undertaken in a semi-urban setting renowned for its textile exports. Having absorbed so many influences, you might think that he entered a career that connected back to those origins, but that was not the case.

After completing a master’s degree in science, Mr. Venkatraman was preparing to join a Ph.D. program; however, he joined the Indian space program instead, expanding his perspective on what can be accomplished. You are probably expecting to read that Mr. Venkatraman then became an astronaut . . . but that’s not what happened.

Instead, his focus turned earthward and outward: He entered the information technology (IT) industry and began work in the United States, gaining important skills in IT at firms like KPMG, FedEx, Compaq, BvOI, and ABN AMRO Bank. Supremely talented, his quickly rose through the ranks from project manager to program manager to vice president.

In the corporate world, he came across many talented individuals who caused him to raise the bar on his dreams and aspirations, directly and indirectly tapping into his hidden talents.

One fine day, he learned that a highly respected colleague was an MBA and a Ph.D. student at Rushmore University. The colleague shared that he would soon be moving into a strategic management function from a technology management position, and the colleague became head of strategy and planning for a leading financial institution.

Encouraged by that example and wanting to build on his IT success, Mr. Venkatraman decided to earn an MBA degree. He hoped his studies would add the skills and knowledge he would need to become a generous entrepreneur, one who would share any wealth gained with employees and other stakeholders.

He also selected Rushmore, primarily because he would have more freedom there to tailor his studies and courses to meet his personal objectives. The freedom he gained provided lots of motivation to learn, and Mr. Venkatraman graduated a little more than a year later.

Asked just before his graduation what his goals for using his MBA degree were, he reported that he now wanted to found a billion-dollar business in a short amount of time. Wow! What a contrast that goal was with what my friends and I had thought about at the same stage in our business training.

Curious about the shift, I asked Mr. Venkatraman to tell me more about how he decided on this new direction. He responded that the course work at Rushmore made him realize that greater things were possible than he had considered before. Wanting to help others, he also began to appreciate that the more successful he was as an entrepreneur, the more people he could help as a philanthropist, a role he hadn’t thought about playing before.

He now feels confident that he can accomplish that aggressive goal and is working hard to achieve it. He is also considering earning a Ph.D. from Rushmore.

Naturally, few people accomplish the full scale of what they hope to achieve. Often, they accomplish quite a bit less.

Even if Mr. Venkatraman falls far short of his new goals, he will probably accomplish more than he would have by merely fulfilling his pre-MBA goals. By learning the power of thinking carefully about what he wants to accomplish, his education served him better than mine did.

What are the lessons for you?

Are you insisting on the best from your career? If not, why not?

Ask yourself what the best could be for your career if you shoot for the top. Then get busy!

Author Resource:-> Donald W. Mitchell is a professor at Rushmore University, an online school. For more information about ways to engage in fruitful lifelong learning at Rushmore to increase your success, visit http://www.rushmore.edu-

Article From Articles Promoter

Many people at different points in their life decide that they wish to pursue a different career. Sometimes it is just a passing interest or repressed childhood dream and this article is not suggesting that your should resign from your account manager position to become a rodeo clown, however more and more people are retraining and pursuing different career paths.

Perhaps you are looking for something with more satisfaction, maybe you have bested all the challenges that your industry has to offer or perhaps you are looking for that golden pay check. Whatever the reason this article breaks down the overwhelming concept of changing your career path into ten simple steps.

1. Decide what job you really want. The importance of this part of the process depends on the circumstances of the individual job seeker however for most people with existing financial responsibilities it is crucial. The secret is finding a balance between what you really want to do and what is realistically achievable. It is essential to seek career advice and industry knowledge from impartial advisers preferably from within the industry you are examining.

2. Obtain the relevant training or qualifications. Use online resources and job search websites to look at the current market and at what level you can afford to enter the industry. It will not be financially viable for many people to accept entry level positions so you will have to keep working in your current role and study part-time. This is a good way to meet people training at similar levels from within the industry and employers will respect this as it shows you really want it.

3. Gain work experience in that field. Another great way to impress future employers is to do work shadows or work experience. This is more applicable to certain industries but it will build up your industry contacts, allow for networking and give you valuable practical knowledge you can apply in your courses.

4. Update your CV catering to the industry and specific position. Start building your CV as early as possible using this experience. Seek advice from industry professionals and your tutors about structure and content. Use online job searches and CV wizards to get ahead of the game.

5. Monitor trade magazines, websites and job search websites. Knowledge of the job market is essential because timing is everything in job searching. The trade magazines of the industry provide crucial information about the main players, legislative changes and trade organisations that will prove invaluable in job searches and interviews.

6. Register with Job Search sites. This resource is fantastic as you can float your CV then wait for responses, judging the effectiveness of your CV in the process. This site will be used by many specialist recruitment consultancies within the industry so keep a note of which agencies are handling the jobs you are interested in.

7. Listen To The Recruitment Consultants. When it comes to specialist recruitment, always listen to the consultants. They know what is going on in the industry and can give invaluable advice about CV, potential employers and where the money is.

8. Be pro-active and send CVs, request applications for positions and follow up when you say you will. This is imperative as you need to manage the consultants to a certain extent, build relationships and instil confidence by meeting deadlines and commitments to contact.

9. Get the interview and attend as many interviews as you can. The consultants are only there to get you an interview so have that objective with them. Attend as many as possible as they are valuable learning experiences and you might come back to that company in five years time with more experience. Even bad interviews are learning experiences.

10. Do not listen to interview techniques. They are crude, false and employers can generally see through them. You must be yourself, even if that means being nervous. If you have done your preparation then there should be no nerves, both you and the interviewer want you to be the right person for the job so enjoy it and use it as a networking opportunity. Each interviewer is another industry contact.

Happy hunting and good luck!

Author Resource:-> Shaun Parker is a leading online job search expert with many years of experience in the recruitment industry.

Article From Articles Promoter

Most journeys have a path and a destination and a career journey is no different. “Career PATH” means the direction in which you want your career to go in and the destination you would like it to achieve. Some of the elements of Career Path are – job, industry, and responsibility you want to take, recognition you want, and way you want to work.

Some of us choose just one career PATH in our lifetime; however, many of us may want to revise our career PATH one or more number of times. You may be choosing a career PATH because either you are starting your career OR you want to see new opportunities or fulfill new ambitions or may be changes in your job or industry have forced you to consider new career PATH.

HOW TO CHOOSE A CAREER PATH

In earlier times most of the people were on a career PATH which they have not consciously chosen and which has been given to them by circumstances. We here such stories – “My father was a painter and his dad before him” OR “In our times we did not have college in our town so I have taken this job” OR “My college School didn’t offer me those subjects”. And some even say that “It was the first job I had and I’ve just stayed” OR “There are not many options for girls”

With the changing times people have become more conscious of choosing their career. Even some of the job portals take advantage of this fact that people are not happy in wrong career choice (Must have seen that TV commercial of Monster – “Caught in the wrong job”). In the new age your choice of career PATH is important and should be an Informed; and well thought-out choice

INFORM YOURSELF ABOUT YOUR CHOICES

You will need to keep yourself informed about – You, the influences which may affect your choices and your options.

About You: You will need to consider some of the crucial aspects and ask questions like (1) what you want from life? (2) What are your motives for working – some work for money, some for learning and so on? (3) What rewards you want from work? (4) What are your key skills (5) how much you want to change and how much you are prepared to change for job?

Influences on your choices: Many factors can influence your choice of career PATH. Understanding what they are and how they might affect your choice will help you put them in right perspective and decide which ones should influence you. Key factors which may influence your choice of career PATH are – (1) Changes to types of work and ways of working (e.g. computers have changes many jobs) (3) Changes to the availability of education and training (4) your financial circumstances, and (5) other people in your life (e.g. family).

Your options: If you are considering a change in your career PATH; your options will fall into one or following category – Change your skills, Change your job or industry or Change your way of working. To identify your options you may need to inform yourself about The nature of specific jobs or industries, opportunities in specific jobs or industries, skills needed for specific jobs or industries and training and education opportunities.

MAKING WELL-THOUGHT-OUT DECISION OF CHOICE

You have seen that you may need to be informed about a lot of things before you can start making a choice. Some people feel that they able to make choices on their own, you may prefer or need to discuss your choices with other people (may be Career Guru at careercola.com). The person could be someone at your workplace, or someone who does professional career counseling or may be your cousin whom you feel is appropriate. We recommend you to seek independent advice from a careers guidance adviser who can also give you access to professional resources such as a career matching exercise, which can help you to identify career PATHs which would suit you.

Are you worried about how difficult the transition is going to be? Then you are not alone.

Many people go through similar anticipation when thinking about attempting a career change. Your career is among the most important things in your life, and changing it is one of the most stressful decisions you will ever make. Be Passionate The reason why you would even consider a career change in the first place is probably because you feel passionate about something and want to pursue it. There is no sense in making a change if you are not going to be any happier than you already are. You may be earning a five-figure salary, but if it is not making you happy and if you are not content with what you are doing, then it might be a good time to switch.Changing careers should be about passion and personal fulfillment. Do Your Research Make sure that before you make the final decision you conduct a thorough research on available opportunities. You need to analyze what skills you have and what skills you may need to acquire for your new job. You should be confident about salary prospects and other relevant information. You may have lots of expectations about the career you want, but conducting the necessary research will help you look beyond this rosy picture. Work with a mentor, such as a career coach, before you make the final decision.

Career Exploration Changing your career can be overwhelming. Explore your options before you decide to make a commitment. Start by categorizing the careers you are interested in. This helps in narrowing down your options. Then pick only those that interest you the most, putting the others aside.

Ask yourself questions such as:

• Why am I exploring this career?

• Will I need additional training or education?

• What are the opportunities and risks in pursuing this career?

These questions will help give you some very important and necessary answers. You can’t really begin on the path to career change until you know why you want to change and how you will go about it. The fact is that changing careers can be very time consuming and expensive, and you don’t want to start the process flying blind. Once you have all the information you need, you can focus on one career option and work toward achieving it. Listen to your heart and head and then make a balanced decision. Whatever you do, remember you need to be flexible and devote a lot of time and energy to jump start your efforts.