Superintend your career

If you want to be successful in your career, you have to work hard. But more importantly, you have to supervise it yourself. You cannot afford to regard yourself as just a person who has no control over his career. The truth is that you are not only an architect of your career, but its sculptor too.  

Superintending your career means taking keen interest in it at all times and ensuring that you do not deviate from your objectives at all. And that calls for lot of hard hammering, chiseling, scraping and polishing at each and every stage of your career.

Your career life-span comprises four phases:

· Commencement phase: This phase does not include formative years and starts when you are fairly embedded in your career. It is likely that you could be on the lookout for a break, though matured people will invariably be discovering what precise they ought to be doing. Should you want to go in for a career change, you will have to reset and rewind your watch. A new opening will call for immense judiciousness and skills to face new challenges that may surface. The new opening will be a prospect by itself and could range from accepting a position in a different field of work altogether to a shift in status or collaboration. The commencement phase is characterized by a sharp learning curve with lots of impediments in and around your new surroundings. If you do not have a clear comprehension of the basics, you will be required to exert really hard to stand steadfastly in your career. Under such circumstances, you must read success stories of successful personalities and subscribe to short duration training programmes. You will also be required to craft an image for yourself so that you can negotiate your salary because of your good contributions to the organisation that you work in. The commencement phase is also characterised by intense networking and that would call for appropriate investment of time and effort to facilitate smooth advancement towards your ultimate career objective.

· Advancement Phase: During this phase, your professional career will be all set to achieve success. Having embedded yourself well in your maiden job, you ought to be engaged in activities that call for increased responsibilities and higher roles. In this context, you should make use of your experience to develop your career. Your seniors may assign you difficult and demanding tasks but that should not discourage you at all. In this phase too, your professional advancement, image crafting and networking will be impacted. Remember that as you move up on the career ladder, the more is your knowledge base. It is essential that your professional advancement is in harmony with organisational imperatives; if you do not do well on his count, your overall performance will plummet. To guard against any such eventuality, you should subscribe to master classes and participate in intensive technical courses. As far as you brand image is concerned, it should not be forgotten that any advancement cannot be achieved sans a corresponding advancement of your value. If ou have been a conscientious worker all along, you will undoubtedly be Number One for all organisational matters – be they promotions, transfers to overseas appointments and increase in monetary remunerations. It is likely that your company is not quick in its response; under such situations, you could be spotted by placement agencies for appointments pitched at a higher plane. Unlike in the commencement phase, people will approach you for assistance. To meet such requirements, it is inescapable to continue expanding your contact base and share your resources with other professionals.

· Maturity phase: This happens to be the penultimate phase and is characterised by the criticality of remaining relevant in your pursuit. You can do so by maintaining your skills and knowledge at a very high state. You simply cannot bank upon something that you trained upon years ago. Participation in refresher workshops, technical training programmes and workshops and allied training events will stand you in good stead. You must be on the lookout to help anybody who gets stuck in his or her work. When you are at the advancement stage, you should have made a mark for yourself. Your organization and environment alike will place great expectations on you, but since you are already at a fairly senior position by now, there will be hardly any opportunity for promotions. Also, by this time, your contact base would have stabilised and you would know influential persons of the industry that you are associated with. Counting on their support will not be out of place at all.

· Reject & regrets phase: This is an undesirable phase and nobody wants to be a party to it. It is that stage wherein you are there in a career or job waiting to eventually phase out. Who would like to undergo the agony of such a phase? If that be so, it does not warrant any discussion. But a pertinent point is that in this phase, you should wish to start all over again so that the freshness and value of your career continues to exist in a job market that is plagued with stiff competition.

Remember that if you want something that you have never had, you should be willing to engage yourself in doing something that you have never done. That is how you will be successful. But you cannot afford to take things easy, lose out on your focus, get de-motivated and develop a negative outlook. Your personal monitoring will keep you on the correct track. That personal monitoring is what superintendence is all about.