Grasp career opportunities to succeed

All opportunities are like buses – if you miss one, there is another one coming. Two pertinent questions that therefore arise are “Have you ever slogged to get a job?” and “Did you ever miss a chance to move ahead in your career?”

If you seek to make progress in your career or want a changeover, it is essential that you are able to make out opportunities that serve you and also follow them. Opportunities are invariably difficult to recognize, but not that difficult that you miss out on them totally. However, the process is quite time-consuming and calls for fortitude and resolve.

Besides achieving an apt role for yourself, you also need to gain insight into various alternatives available to you. You ought to be always geared up to appreciate areas where you could improve upon. So, how do you identify and select right career opportunities? A six-stage process helps you do this:

·   Have a proper outlook:  You are perennially surrounded by opportunities; it is you who has to incessantly scout around for them. If you do so on a daily basis, the better will it be; and recording them for reference is the best thing that you can do. The list can always be pruned later.

·   Track down openings:  Not all posts are advertised; you must have ways and means to know about them – they could well be in your own organization or outside. Besides getting to know about them, you should also reflect upon the road that will lead you there. It will not be out of place to state that taking on honorary assignments could be a great facilitator in this context; you would also be able to build a network and improve upon your practical experience thus.

·   Be familiar with your capabilities:  It will be meaningless to hunt for opportunities without an idea of your strong-points and limitations. To be able to discern your capabilities, you should know aspects that you get pleasure from or are good at and the wherewithal that is at your disposal. In addition, your distinctive principles, contact base and image in the eyes of others also help you to identify your plus-points. With regard to your vulnerabilities, you can discern them by listing assignments that you tend to shy away from and also recognizing your negative attributes. You have to embark upon a plan to ensure that your strengths get transformed into opportunities.

·   Know your priorities:  You should be cognizant of various aspects that have a bearing on you and your life; cataloguing them in order of precedence will help you spot opportunities. Relevant facets that warrant contemplation are your aspirations, remunerations, job satisfaction, prospects for acquiring additional qualifications and job security. If you know your priorities, you will be able to select the best from the good ones.

·   Pick from your picks:  If you know what you stand for and are clear about your capabilities; and also comprehend various opportunities that have come your way, you can well decide which ones need to be progressed further. You need to concentrate on the best few by examining them in detail for what they entail, how they are compatible with you, the recompense they can offer, the prospects of contentment and the degree of difficulty associated with each of them. You will thus be able to narrow down your list and then take a final call after a holistic consideration. 

·   Get ready & proceed:  It is always advisable to first explore opportunities that exist within the organisation that you are serving in. You will thus be able to determine those that are your cup of tea and promotion avenues that exist therein. Remember that an early bird catches the worm, therefore, the earlier you start, and the better it will be for you. Once you decide to move forward, you should identify methods by which you can increase your knowledge base and acquire additional qualifications.

  Discovering new openings ought to be a continuing procedure and should not be regarded as an ultimate objective. You have to be highly observant, uncomplaining and unrelenting in your efforts; and simply cannot prognosticate when an opportunity will come knocking at your door. And to succeed, you will have to jump at it as perhaps you would be doing at conclusions. 

Be a professional, yet retain your individuality

“I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet.”

---- Mahatma Gandhi

The general advice given to people that in order to be successful in their career and work, they have to display professionalism of a high standard. Taking a cue from this, people either make themselves a mechanical component of a machine or do away with some of their own individualities so that they can come up to the paradigm that corporate culture or professional ambit call for. This is a misleading notion and far from reality.

If you have to be a professional, you need not lose out on your individuality; you cannot afford to forget who you actually are. Most organisations desire that the persona and character of their staff should glisten. This is an unwritten and unspoken qualitative requirement that exists even prior to the recruitment process. It should be remembered that no employer will ever have on rolls people who lack self-inspiration to chase their own good.

How can you assure yourself that you will be professional and yet be able to maintain your individuality and personal distinctiveness? How can you be certain that you will not deviate from your personal estimation of matters? Will you be sure that you do not fail to protect your own welfare? Here is how you can do that:

·   Never shy away from promoting & revealing your well-being:  All organisations want their employees to be pleasing personalities who are out to live life king-size. You should make your preferences about your inclinations and free-time activities known to your colleagues and seniors alike. It could well be philately, sports, fine arts or any other sideline activities. You should maintain a professional identity specific to you and never be reluctant to communicate information and explanations about issues that are dear to your heart. If you do not shrink from propriety in maintaining your professionalism, the management of the company that you are serving in will feel delighted to see you pursue your leisure activities. Needless to state, you will, in the process convey varied perceptions to the environment; this by itself is what organizations seek for achieving modernization and hits – in other words success.     

·   Don’t keep your opinion to yourself, but reveal it alertly:  What is that makes your individuality? It is your viewpoint and principles that make you what you are. Therefore, why shouldn’t you make your standpoints known to others?  It could well be anything that you have experienced or what you feel about – say, your views about societal issues, current affairs or anything else. You can be professional in your approach and dealings without sacrificing your candidness, but you need to be diligently plainspoken and for that you have to have a balanced outlook while talking so that arguments are avoided. If you are working, it does not imply that you have to be compulsorily reticent and uncommunicative.      

·   Show concern & regard towards individualities of everybody:  Like you, everybody else at your place of work – your seniors, colleagues and subordinates alike – also have a right to their own views and a personal life to lead. They too are not mechanical components and have some significance of their own. Getting to know about them and holding their opinions in esteem can perhaps lead you to discover and share familiar aims. Workplace need not be one that places restrictions on anybody; on the contrary, it should be a place where people with divergent dispositions and interests work in harmony towards common goals.

The primary attribute of professionalism is being able to retain the constituents that make you what you are. And it definitely does not mean making you cast yourself in a die or being a square peg in a round hole. You have to be smart and sharp so that you can influence your exclusive and inimitable distinctiveness to become an appreciated employee. Remember that the spirited and daring act is still to think for yourself – and that too aloud. Some wise man was truly wise when he said that the privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.

So why should you part with your individuality and become that of another? Follow your own star!

Expedite your re-employment after a layoff

You have been working without pretense for a number of years and one fine day you are told that your services are no longer required. Shocked, you would be; but what do you propose to do? How will you ensure that your job security in your next employment is assured?

Today, retrenchments are common occurrences. Just as a lawn is mowed to keep the grass fresh and green, strength reduction in organizations is periodically down to fuel efficiency. But since you are at the receiving end, you undergo a major setback. The mantras for coping with it are involvement, introspection and dedication.

·   Involvement:  This is a three-pronged activity; you need to be involved with yourself, your career support team and recruiters. A pink slip can be very upsetting and calls for a deep understanding of your sentiments. You will have to undergo distress, rejection, haggling, despair and approval. Unless you go through them, you will never achieve a stability of mind that is essential to get into any other job. To be able to pull through the stun, you need to provided encouragement and guidance in your new job hunt. And as you recuperate, new recruiters will emerge as the hub of your involvement. Reaching them will turn out to be your prime aim. At this juncture, your research and homework will count. You should be thoroughly familiar with what you have done and how it contributed towards the achievement of your last company’s objectives. You should devise ways and means of communicating them lucidly in your resume, interview sessions or other forums.

·   Explaining: You ought to know aspects that need to be explained as ingredients of your new job search. Retrenchment provides you an opportunity to introspect your contributions, road map and objectives. You need to be convinced that your principles and standards are in harmony with your career. If they are not, you will never be able to derive job contentment. Unless your ideals and ethics interconnect with those of your company, you will not derive professional satisfaction. Your zeal and enthusiasm will serve as a great impelling factor for you to get to work. It is also necessary that you take stock of your inclinations and expertise. This will help you identify other avenues for exploration; the fact that you have slogged in a particular field could warrant reconsideration. You should mull over your interests and categorize new qualifications that you need to acquire, should you decide to go in for a career change. Remember that your inquisitiveness and interests, rather than any apprehension should prompt you in your move forward. You should learn to hug alterations; all organizations look for this attribute among their staff. It is only when you finish with all these aspects, that you should redraft your resume. After all, a resume is an important apparatus to project your USPs.

·   Dedication:  Having decided what to do, you need to formulate an arrangement and go ahead with all your steam for its attainment. You ought to evaluate company profiles, study job openings and expand your contact base so that you can apply for appropriate posts and also be able to monitor the progress. It is necessary that you remain upbeat at all times; the past will not be easy to forget, however, you can do so if you draw lessons from it. Your personal honesty has to be above board in this context. Job offers will come to you, but you will have to exercise due caution in your acceptance. If you fail to do so, you will be afflicted with a ricochet condition; and sooner or later, you will be out on the road looking for another job. Job contentment and security are a state of mind; you yourself are a fountainhead for them. Understand that it is not obligatory for anybody to offer you a job; you need to build up an image for yourself because your career is the most significant facet of your well-being.

The business environment and job market today may not be pleasant. Cutbacks, pay-cuts and layoffs have become common; and they do impose difficulties. But that does not imply that you have reached the end of the world. Your search for a job notwithstanding, remember that happiness is an inside job.

Produce & direct your professional success

There are many people who dream big and seek more; and they get whatever they want. They have characteristic behavioural patterns and indulge in vital actions that by themselves serve to roll out a red carpet for them. There are others too whose conduct make their career plummet. Success is therefore all a matter of how you conduct yourself. Whatever are your career objectives and no matter how you visualize things, there are several actions that will at all times provide you the required prop to be successful in your long career journey.

 You definitely want to draw feelings of contentment in your life; for that it is essential that you recognize your aspirations and initiate appropriate action to put together your preferred professional distinctiveness. It is also vital to muster adequate support and encouragement to help you tide over difficult times. The following actions will help you attain the crowning glory that you seek in your life and career:

·   Remove ambiguity:  It is essential that you are explicitly clear about your objectives and priorities in life. To start with, you may be tenuous, but after some time, everything has to be consequential. If a successful career eludes you, like it happens with many others, it is because you fail to make use of your inherent capabilities and visualize problem areas. You need to be sentient to what is happening around you to have more options at your disposal.  

·   Protect your frontiers:  If you are clear about what you intend to seek or achieve, you should be resilient enough to safeguard your border lines, revere your main concerns and talk of various prerequisites of success – all as pertinent to you. There are many who know what they seek to attain, but at the last minute back out from taking any initiative. This is nothing but a collapse; you need to guard against it.  

·   Work sincerely but astutely:  Your devotion to work ought to be like the proverbial tree that faces a storm but does not shake with it. You have to be venturesome too, but without being imprudent. Seeking assistance whenever and wherever necessary should be a principle to be followed. In this way, you will be pledging yourself to working without pretense and sans a rigid mindset. People who work to plug holes in their potential invariably taste success earlier than those who shy away from doing so.

·   Foster potent associations:  You should understand that you cannot go all alone to attain your objectives. Networking is an essential ingredient of career success and you need to spare time and efforts for it. Your relationships should be based on mutual faith, sincerity and collective ideals. Concurrently, you have to guard against any cut-throat attitude and sycophancy. In other words, honesty and candidness should form the very basis of all your relationships.

·   Captivate with your words:  All successful people have great communication skills. The manner in which they relate their pursuits turn out to be very motivating for others. They know the precise reasons behind every single action of theirs and exert an intense pull on like-minded people with their superb negotiating skills. In other words, successful people know how to portray themselves positively to draw support and allegiance.  

·   Convert worry to stimulation:  You will have fear and anxiety afflicting you. Therefore, it is essential that you maintain your calm and preclude any hounding. Display of an utmost sense of responsibility and a high degree of professional skills is thus inescapable to adapt yourself to emerging challenges. If you do not learn from experience, you learn nothing.  You have to find a way to transform every bit of your exasperation and frustration into encouragement for revolution, progress and triumph.   

If you do not act upon the above tenets, you will move ahead in your career journey alright, but it will be an extremely arduous one. Every segment, every bend every intersection and every fork will prove to be a painful experience. Whether you reach your destination or not, the end of your career journey will leave you feeling perplexed and unsatisfied.  

Unless you are ambitious, you do not make progress. Professional success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go. And the most creative shortcut to it is to keep re-assessing its connotation for you on a continual basis. You have to be your own sponsor.

Navigate your career in the right direction

 Do you mentally prolong your working hours hoping that the day would come to an end? After lunch, do you keep thinking of your home and domestic obligations? Or do you feel that you must hit home at the earliest so that you could watch the cricket match telecast?

All the above situations are symptomatic of ennui and needless to state, manifest an absence of the desired oomph and focus in you towards your job. If this true, then it is high time that you drive yourself out of inertia. It calls for changing gears so that acceleration in your career is brought about.

Here is how you can set your compass so that you navigate yourself on to the right course:

·   Introspect the causes:  Who do you think is the primary contributory factor for your dissatisfaction? Are you tired of your routine charter of daily duties? Do you feel that your colleagues are upsetting you? Or is it that your boss is troubling your mind? Or do you suffer from a feeling that you are not being compensated enough? Whatever be the cause identified by you, a suitable line of action needs to be formulated by you so that the state of affairs get altered in your favour. In addition, you should also figure out if you too add to the overall disconcertion that you suffer from. Having done so, you should seek to know from yourself what needs to be done – should you switch over to a new job, face up to the person who is causing you agitation or even change your career?

·   Triumph over trepidation:  You should set your apprehensions and fright into your standpoint. That there is nothing more monumental in significance than the objectives that you have set for yourself should be acknowledged. It is likely that you are unable to face a gathering or do not feel confident enough to handle a greater responsibility, you have to look the problem straight into its eyes. No problem vanishes of its own accord; in fact, if left unaddressed, you are likely to encounter it on a larger scale and in the bargain your career will take a beating.    

·   Brush up your curriculum vitae:  If you feel that you are contented with whatever you have achieved, there is every possibility that you have not perused your resume since long. Any person who is in a forward-movement mode is physically and mentally prepared for the next step. Can you discount the possibility of a good opportunity knocking at your door – in your current organization or elsewhere? If you keep your curriculum vitae brushed up, you will be in a better position to act in response to new breaks. To be able to do that, you must keep track of all your achievements at work and document them appropriately in your resume on a continual basis.

·   Be a do-gooder:  You may regard your job as dull and monotonous; and think that you can work your way through it with ease. Simultaneously, you may also feel that it is not realistic yet to change it or that time is not opportune enough to change your career. Under such circumstances, you should mull over the option of being a do-gooder. You could take to advising others who may not be very proficient in their functions. In this way, the experience that you have gained will come to be used by others. In addition, you could also take on concomitant functions like presiding officer of a board or even training in a new discipline altogether.   

·   Display flexibility towards transformation:  Simply put and lastly, you may be suffering from a mental block. Narrow and restricted thinking could well be acting as an impediment for you to realize a job that you have been aspiring for. If you are not certain about what you seek to achieve, you should look towards people you know. You should inquire from them about their likes and dislikes; and keep your mind open. New thoughts and prospects should not be discarded. Research has shown that people become obdurate when they view themselves and their work; consequentially your friends, philosophers and guides cannot help you to think ambitiously.

Remember that when a door closes, another one is bound to open. Ironically, we tend to keep gazing at the closed door itself. You can climb up the ladder of success in your career by stepping on the rungs of prospects. That is precisely what will define your career.

The why of setting career goals

“Without goals and plans to reach them, you are like a ship that has set sail with no destination.”

--- Fitzhugh Dodson

Where do you figure yourself after five years?

Where did you figure yourself today five years back?

What is that you like and detest about your present job?

What is your appreciation of an ideal job, to include the responsibilities you would like to shoulder, the setup you like to serve in and the remuneration you expect to receive that you think you are cut out for?

Having answered the above questions, what do you think are your eventual and definitive career goals? Imagine yourself at the zenith of your career and then ponder over the organization or field that you would like to be in, the appointment that you would like to hold and the pay packet that should ideally be given to you.

If you can find responses to the above, then you are heading in the right direction. You need to keep them at the back of your mind and move ahead with all the zeal at your command. This will help you to give a distinct shape to your career and become and achieve whatever you have been aspiring for.

It is essential that you take stock of where you stood in the past before you figuring out where you want to be. Glancing at your career and the times gone by will provide you a jump board to get to your career goals. You will thus be able to carve out a mosaic of your goals and discern their configuration vis-à-vis your present or future panoramas. You also need to reflect on what your immediate and long-term goals. If you have none, you will waste time and efforts; and resultantly suffer from perennial exasperation.

 In the light of the above, you must set goals for yourself and start making endeavours to realize them. In the centre of all the confusion and mess, away from all the impediments, out-of-the-way from all the inertia will be your goals. There will various issues that will impact your career goals and their realization. But you have to put your head down, do the best job possible, let all the hassles go by and work towards them.

There are five aspects that you ought to invariably mull over; they are:

·  Progress:  What is the type of professional advancement that you are looking for? Depending upon your answer, you will also need to identify the wherewithal that will be required to facilitate that.

·  Funds: At the end of the day, besides job satisfaction, it is the salary that you get that also matters. What is the pay package that you are seeking? If significant perks and privileges are offered to you, will you settle for anything less? These are significant questions, the answers to which will determine your goals.

·  Contentment:  A successful career implies derivation of a high degree of job satisfaction. Contentment is essential for attaining long-term objectives and is relevant in the context of everything related to your work and workplace. You should know various aspects that bring about contentment in you.

·  Familiarity & skills:  What is your disposition towards gaining new experiences and facing new confrontations? You need to be convinced about the type of experiences and skills that you want to seek and contribute.

·  Atmosphere:  Workplaces are an assortment of people with diverse backgrounds and inclinations. What are the types of people that you feel comfortable working with? What is the working environment that you are seeking so that you acquit yourself well?

Irrespective of the type of job you get into, your career goals have to be selected on the basis of your likes and dislikes; they have to be in harmony with your preferences. You should bear in mind that your career goals may change on account of the options you exercise and the advancement that you clock. This calls for a periodic evaluation of your career goals. You must set them high and should not come to a standstill till you achieve them. But remember that your goals are dreams with deadlines