Be career-conscious to maintain a lead

Quite a few people tend to sail through their careers from the time they take up a job and eventually superannuate. While they go to work every day and sweat it out, they are not truly sentient of their career, particularly when it comes to giving it a direction for achievement of their objectives. But people who are career-conscious deliberate on what seek to accomplish in their professional endeavours and devise ways and means to do so. Consequentially, such people remain at the wheels and are generally not dictated by others or events. They are able to visualise and address hold-ups to their benefit.

Here are ten aspects that you need to do to be career-conscious and maintain a lead over others in your career journey:

· Remain at the wheels: To believe that your company or manager is responsible for your career development will amount to being presumptuous. You should be aware that the responsibility is yours and hence you have to be at the wheels and navigate through your career successfully.

· Be aware of happenings around you: Primarily, this entails being awake and responsive to what is happening in your company. Today, with stiff competition around, companies tend to be impacted by global developments over which they have no influence whatsoever. Therefore, if you are alert, you will exert yourself successfully at your job. In quite a number of instances, people tend to take impulsive or uninformed career decisions and land up in unforeseen difficult situations. If you want to be always ready for unforeseen developments, it is essential that you keep your eyes and ears open.

· Engage yourself in continual learning: While your company may organise learning and development programmes, the basic responsibility to update your skills and knowledge is yours. The initiative has to come from you alone. You cannot wait for your company to ask you to improve your qualifications or develop a particular skills set. If you think that your company will make available to you the wherewithal or details, you will be sadly mistaken. You will have to ideate all plans to increase your individual worth, experience and knowledge on a continuous basis.

· Nurture potent associations: All successful people invariably have a wide network of people and influence. They always have people readily available on whom they can bank upon. You need to foster excellent relationships with your co-workers and seniors alike because you can never predict when you will require their assistance. Learning from people in your contact base is always a big possibility.

· Seek periodic appraisals: It is essential to be aware if you are pulling on well with your boss. You should know how he or she views you and this can be possible only if you sit across the table and seek an appraisal about your performance. Doing so will reinforce the psychological robustness of your work place, an aspect necessary to put up with your career.

· Be on the lookout for openings and prospects: Most of the times, people are nor even aware of various opportunities available within an organisation for career advancement. But if you keep your wits about, you can always let people know about your willingness. It is also essential to keep an eye on openings elsewhere too and for that you will need to establish liaison and contact with individuals outside your company. Social media sites are a good platform for the purpose.  

· Evaluate your worth: Depending upon your experience and length of service, you will have to your credit a definite worth that is centred on them. Needless to state, but important is the point that such worth is perpetually connected with some people and groups in your life as also your availability. To be able to move forward, you need to know what your worth is and who is likely to appreciate it.

· Build an exclusive brand image: It is all about being able to project yourself in the job market. Your CV is a potent tool towards this alright, but you need to focus on making use of social media sites for the purpose. Your presence on such sites needs to be controlled too so that the image is portrayed in consonance with your intended objectives.

· Don’t deviate from your path & be explicit: If at all you want to affect any change in your career at any time in your career journey, you will need to be precise, detailed and unambiguous. It is your degree of clarity with regard to whatever you want to seek and how you intend doing so that will help you to move forward.

If you want to be career-conscious, you need not take giant strides or mammoth decisions in a single day. Small, progressive steps to take charge of your career and reach the endpoint of your career journey will be inescapable. 

Dogmata that shore up career success

Whatever results we achieve in life, they are contingent on the principles and values we have relating to ourselves, our surroundings, our conditions and our work. They also depend to a great extent on what the future holds for us and our adeptness and capacities to influence the turn of events.

While there could be several dogmata that have an effect on our capability to embark upon a successful career, major ones harboured by people are:

· I can craft my own actuality: Anything that you select to ruminate on or experience about and eventually do that, expresses your actuality that is originated. If you believe that your life is spinning out of control and success is eluding you, you will tend to be left high and dry. You will start relying only on providence. Remember that whatever you dream gets transformed into accomplishments and from such accomplishments, additional dreams   come to you. It is this cyclic phenomenon that generates the utmost form of existence. Success will never become an actuality unless you get going to make your dreams into actualities.

· I have confidence in my abilities: When you are cognisant of your dexterities and hold them in regard, you will definitely strive to apply them to practical situations. But if you suffer from any reservations or qualms about them, you will always be reluctant in your outlook and in the process fail miserably at clutching prospects that keep passing by. Hesitation and disinclination will be quite a common occurrence when you have to move outside a relaxed environment and experiment with new things. That is the time when you need to be really confident about your capabilities and belief that success is crucial for you.    

· I have full faith in whatever I am doing: If you take up a job or a career that does not hold out much significance or sense for you, it is implausible that you will ever flourish. You need to give wings to your passions in a manner that is of benefit to you and the world. It is an established fact that when you engage yourself in any activity that you adore and with a conviction that it is of import, your disposition, attitude and life-force gets uplifted. The greatest satisfaction of life is the conviction that tells you that are correct. In other words, you need to have full faith in whatever you do.

· I know that I am competent enough to do better: Restraining your self-confidence will invariably render your life unrewarding. You should be certain of your capacity, the external boundaries of which are determined exclusively by your individual convictions and imaginations. You may set any number of objectives for yourself and perhaps identify several ways and means in terms of skills and knowhow to attain them. That by themselves may not suffice; you must have confidence in your own faculties, competencies and potentials to attain success. 

· I know I can learn more: The knowledge base that you have today will not see you through your entire life and career. At some stage or the other you will realise your deficiencies and feel the need to acquire more. But if you fail to take any action, you are bound to stagnate. You should not believe that you have crossed the learning phase. You should feel confident in your ability to learn. 

· I do believe that I can defy all tests & trials: Your career journey will have its share of ups and downs; evidently the downs will be exasperating and trying. Most people tend to give up in the wake of difficulties. It is essential that you do not get bogged down when you get stuck; any impediment or obstacle that you encounter should goad you to think and find a way out. You must keep doing your utmost with a conviction that you can bring about a positive alteration to the situation that you are faced with or are in currently. If you happen to harbour any signs of a wounded outlook, the earlier you shed them, the better it will be. Despite all the tests and trials, you need to feel that you are the author and potentate of your own fate and future. It is only then that you will succeed in negotiating various hurdles in your life. 

· I am an original and not a dual personality: To be successful, it is inescapable to be an authentic and genuine individual. Even while building your network, you have to be so. You must guard against any presumptuousness with regard to emulating behaviour that does not gel with you. Trying to hide behind a smokescreen is unlikely to lead you anywhere other than failure. Your actions and deeds should be in harmony with you are and nobody knows you better than you yourself. Remember that having a dual personality will never help you in the identification of your shortfalls, as a result of which, you will never be able to affect any self-improvement. 

To accomplish great things in your life and career, you need to act and also dream. You also need to plan and believe. There are many rules for success, but none of them will work unless you do. Victory invariably belongs to the person who is most resolute.

Lead your team competently

A team leader gets his team from where it is to where it has not been. He or she is supposedly a dealer in hope and unlocks the potential of all team members to become better. And in doing so, he is the chief but not the lord. He is the very influence that brings about team success.

Are you due for elevation to the post for a team leader? Even if you are not, there is nothing inappropriate in know what a good team leader should be all about. A team may comprise technical and non-technical members and hence, being a team leader calls for assorted skills. That is why everybody cannot be a competent team leader. But you can always acquire or improve upon certain skills like:

·Good communication skills: A proficient team leader will have mastery over his words. Communication is something that is beyond talking. It is also about writing, body language and listening. As an effective team leader, you must have the ability to not only communicate with different types of people in different echelons. You deed to do it well with your team, your seniors and your counterparts heading other teams. Remember that good communications always lead to good comprehension, familiarity and mutual valuing. And that is what fostering team spirit is all about.  

· Poise and cool: As a team leader, being able to maintain your calm under conditions of stress and strain is an inescapable attribute. You team could be assigned difficult assignments entailing great effort, deadlines and pressures from within and outside. And God forbid if things go wrong, there will be pressures of a different kind. Being able to maintain your poise and calm is what you as a team leader should be adept at.

· Accountability: As a team leader, you simply cannot pass on blame to someone else. You have to be accountable for your actions and decisions. It is necessary that if at all you make a mistake or wrong decision, you do not run away from them. On the contrary, it will be appreciated if you acknowledge them and initiate necessary action to offset their fallout. You will have to ensure that their recurrence is prevented. In fact that should be the guiding philosophy for everyone, but it is more applicable to a team leader for certain.

· Appreciation: If your team members have to respect and believe you, they should be well-integrated into the team. And the best way to do so is by acknowledging their efforts, howsoever big or small they could be. While acknowledging the good work of any team member individually is always advisable, indulging in it for your team as a whole will keep your team contented, efficient and upbeat. As a team leader, your mantra should be, “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” This will be adopted by your team if you value individual contributions.

· Persuasion: This is intrinsic to your role as team leader and leads to things getting accomplished. Persuasion implies convincing your team members about a plan that should be implemented as also others who would need to be approached for release of required resources like additional manpower ore finances. This ability will help in your career advancement.

· Decision-making:  As a team leader, you job entails several issues, including having the power to arrive at prompt decisions. You should be able to formulate a line of action that has applicability in diverse circumstances. This can be done by studying different facts, evaluating them for their effects and outcomes and selecting on a particular choice from amongst several of the. It is important that a choice once exercised should not be changed unless situations themselves get altered.      

The prime task of a team leader is to ensure that loyalty of the team towards the team is maintained and motivation levels of all members to achieve team goals are kept high. To that effect, you should be able to work effectively on a team. Remember that you may be a team leader that places you in a slot above others that necessitate making decisions, nevertheless, you should always ask people what their opinion is. It is also essential that you should find a task for everyone, no matter what their skill or level happens to be. And most importantly, you should enjoy being a team leader. You will have to display due seriousness to all matters, but then that does not imply that you cannot have fun. As a routine, you must always try to balance the serious business at hand with regard for the morale and spirits of the team. Last but not the least, you have to lead by example.

Twigging career advancement

Who doesn’t want to see his or her efforts being appreciated? If your senior praises you for a project well-executed or when you are felicitated for outstanding contributions, don’t you have pleasurable feelings? Words of praise are one thing, but all of us want to experience advancement. But quite a few amongst us do not have any scheme of action for the purpose. In order to attain your objectives – both in career and life – simply winning words of praise is not enough. You need to have an assiduous and systematic outlook towards your career plan.

Career advancement will entail change in designations and additional responsibilities to shoulder. How can you witness it? You may consider seeking help from a career counsellor who can peruse your objectives and assist you to gear up for move head. You may have to provide extensive details, including information about your present job, if any and the possible position it can take you to. Such information may also be obtainable from your employer together with relevant qualitative requirements. The career counsellor will be in a position to contour a complete career path for you and indicate additional efforts by you en route. A mentor should also be able to help out in this regard.

Irrespective of the fact whether it is a career counsellor or a mentor, the important point of the matter is the affiliation and rapport that you infuse into the dialogue. If you are truly self-aware, that is, if you are mindful of your history, circumstances, knowledge, proficiencies and objectives background, the conversation process will definitely be more fruitful. Every single title in your selected domain will invariably call for particular knowhow to obtain it and move on to the next higher one. Each specific knowhow as an entity should be viewed as your personal achievement.

Your career counsellor or mentor may gauge your aptitude or have a tête-à-tête about your existing skills and compare them with the qualitative requirements indispensable for your career progression. Based on the inferences drawn, you can make arrangements to acquire them. If you are already working, you can even approach your management for assistance.

If while exploring the environment, you get an inkling of lesser prospects of growth with your present employer, you can always consider the option of moving on to another company where things are perceived to be more favourable. In case you decide to do so, your resume has to be structured appropriately. Indicating in the resume your intention to advance in your job and career and therefore the change of career line is advisable. Stating that will add potency to your application. However, you must endeavour to find out what your new employer is seeking and underscore your demonstrated performance in your previous job utilising similar expertise. It is also prudent to not to overlook your drawbacks and shortcomings; a mention can be made during the interview with an assertion that you can learn new roles fast and well. Your new employer will not treat this as a disadvantage.

You may apply for a new post in your present company or another company. You can get to know what it calls for only from a person who has served in that appointment or is currently serving. Your aim should be to talk to a present incumbent. In the case of another company, you must find out company policies for employee growth within the organisation or whether they lure and hire a suitable candidate working in a different company. In a nutshell, you should get to know the facts related to how the company values its staff and if serving personnel are given opportunities to ascend the career ladder or not.

In the case of career advancement with your present company, you must view those who are serving in appointments that you seek. For all you know, it may come to your knowledge that a particular employee has resigned. Under such circumstances, you must interact with the concerned employees and discern what that post is all about. Networking with people in that department or vertical will help in your name being considered whenever an opening is there. You must regard your career advancement not as a lone act of one step up, but part of your persistent efforts of moving up one step at a time. However, you must not be found wanting in updating your skills and making your efforts known to people who matter.

People generally accept as true that luck too has a role to play in career advancement, besides aspects like circumstances, academic pursuits and networking. But you need to understand that none of these by themselves can be of any benefit. You will require a premeditated and pre-calculated plan. Your career advancement has to be an intentional subscription to a long-term line of action that has inherent in it well thought-out objectives. The objectives have to be in sync with your penchants and inclinations.

  They say that opportunities are like elevators; they arrive and open their doors only for those who wait. And if you get out of focus, the doors will close. The decision to progress to the next level lies within you and no one can make that decision for you. 

Settling down in a new job

Settling down in a new job may not be easy. Your new company may be quite different from your previous one. Therefore, you should, without much delay get to know what is expected of you and how to go about doing and getting things done. In other words, you will have to establish yourself quickly and effectively in your new role.

Kicking off a new job is a formidable effort because there is everything new for you there. If you do not go about seriously at your new job, chances are that your jubilation will give way to apprehensions and misgivings. Despite various reservations, your initial days at your new job can be made remarkable. If you want to facilitate the adjustment process, you need to organise yourself. How can you do that? Some general guidelines are:

· Don’t pay heed to inconsequentialities: You should overlook trivialities and understand that you are a human being first. Small slip-ups like not recollecting names or venues can be quite bothersome, but there would have been many like you. Such gaffes will not be a yardstick of your capabilities in your new job.

· Dress appropriately: You must get to know dress regulations in advance and then follow them in letter and spirit. Your own comfort in wearing a particular attire notwithstanding, being wrongly dressed can add to your woes in an already worrying atmosphere.

· Be amiable: You should display affability at all times, though you will take time getting acquainted with your co-workers. If ab initio you are friendly, others will open up with you sooner than usual. This is more pertinent if you happen to be joining in a senior designation.

· Know the work culture: You must familiarise yourself with the ethos and values of your company. This would necessitate making a note of various arrangements and implicit challenges, besides identifying people with whom you could possibly build relationships. Every organisation has its own working philosophy and hence you should avoid imposing yourself.

· Discern skills necessary for good performance: All new jobs have inherent contests and defies; and call for expertise that perhaps you may not be having as yet. You must discern them and formulate an appropriate line of action. When you go about like that, besides the buoyancy that you will generate in yourself, you will create a positive impact on your seniors for your initiative.

Your initial months will be hectic and demanding for obvious reasons. But you can always make the adjustment to the new environment a pleasant experience and eliminate any trepidations that you may be harbouring. You can achieve this by:

· Take recourse to known stress-busters: The need to remain stress-free is significant. Being new, you will find yourself worrying. To overcome any uneasiness, you could take a walk in the corridor or simply look out of the window.

· Be punctual: Being early at work strengthens your reputation and encourages people to trust you.  Punctuality will transmit to your team your seriousness towards your work and help you in being at the wheels of your routine. If you want to begin your day in a less stressful manner, you must subscribe to the philosophy ‘Better three hours too soon than a minute too late.’

· Make your work-station orderly: Your table and room should be well-organised. You will find that your comfort level will increase when you know where things are kept. Depending upon the prevalent culture, you could display a small photograph of your family or some items to individualise your work-station; such exhibits will make you feel undisturbed.

· Get to know your job imperatives: The earlier you do so, the better it will be for you. You should get to know what and how your boss believes you to do. If you start feeling confident in your new position, the more self-assuredly you will be able to acquit yourself. And that will create the desired good impression.

· Find people with whom you can spend some time with: Recesses are good times to interact with people. You must identify those with whom you could have lunch together or spend time in the tea-break. You will get to know a lot about the company through casual conversations and people will also get to know you.

· Take part in extra-curricular activities: Whatever be the established norms, you must follow them. This will help in fostering camaraderie. Chipping in for a meal out or witnessing a match will establish your credibility as a team player. However, you need to guard against falling prey to temptations associated with socialising.

  Starting a new job is always chilling, like any new beginning. It should be your endeavour to live up to the impression that you created during the interview session. If you go about adjusting to it with a positive outlook, you will find it amazingly interesting. You should begin by doing what is essential and then do what is possible. Sooner or later you will find yourself doing the impossible.

Mistakes that can cost your career dear

Do you ever have a feeling that despite working satisfactorily, you simply are not moving forward?

If the answer to the above question is in the affirmative, you need to mull over specific areas where you could be faltering. You could be indulging in conducts that are not appreciated by your colleagues and management alike. Perhaps it is high time to recognise your appalling habits and keep your aspirations on the correct course.

It is possible that you could be habitually doing any of the following detrimental activities:

· Ignoring dealings & contacts: You may be of the opinion that a person should simply do his work and disregard everything else. Well, doing your work is obligatory and hence it is no great favour that you may be bestowing on anybody. You should also be focussing your thoughtfulness and responsiveness to your dealings, associations and interactions with your colleagues. Though it may seem normal to believe that an individual ought to be evaluated solely on the basis of his or her performance at work, the actuality is that inter-personal relationships are equally vital at work.

· Attiring unimposingly: You may or may not subscribe to this philosophy, but the truth is that your outwardly appearance is of great significance. Therefore, it is essential that you focus on your outfits, hair and accoutrements. You need to understand that at work, you do not symbolise just yourself; you characterize and personify your company too. Since you exemplify your company’s brand, any wrong dressing will imply that you are deliberately not thoughtful of yourself and your professional objectives; and that you are purposely disregarding your organisation and its interests.   

· Muddling the contours of individuality and professionalism: Your seniors and management will be cognisant of the fact that your personal preferences are linked with your own settings and situations. However, that does not necessitate that you highlight that correlation at your workplace, particularly if you are in assignments that call for mediations and discussions. Your boss and others will generally appreciate that your actions will impact you, but then they would like to see positive impacts on the company too. Remember that if you direct your efforts only on yourself, your career can take a severe beating. There is no denying the fact that developments on your personal front have a major effect on how you conduct yourself at work; the reverse is also true. Therefore when you seek to negotiate any issue related to your work, you have to make certain that your personal and professional lines are demarcated well.

· According higher precedence to pecuniary issues vis-à-vis prospects: You cannot afford to concentrate excessively on money matters and be unable to picture various other gratifying involvements and your overall delight and contentment. If you do so, you will culminate in detesting your very work. It has been seen that when people tend to hold money as more significant than tangible prospects, their career derails. The reason for this that you will fail to clutch opportunities that come knocking at your door and also be unsuccessful in impressing those who can help you in your career progress. Any excessive weightage to financial benefits or additional perks will never stand you in good stead anytime – job interview onwards – in your career journey. 

· Displaying an absence of dynamism and enterprise at work: Exhibiting inventiveness, creativity and ingenuity at work implies ensuring that things do happen or fructify. You simply cannot hope for an apple to fall into your hands, that is, you cannot wait for an incitement or opportunity to come to you on its own. You will have to make serious efforts to make that happen. Remember that taking initiative is the foundation of your career advancement. You will get noticed for your initiative alright, but a lack of it will make you noticed more. Therefore you should not wait for directions and guidance at every step. It is also important that you prioritise your tasks so that you meet all deadlines and are not singled out for any reminders. And if you are unable to create such circumstances for yourself, you are bound to get side-lined and branded as a slow doer.

 Remember that your purpose and calling is not a matter of stake; in fact, it is an option that you exercise. And you just cannot keep waiting for it. You have to get out and achieve it.  You simply cannot afford to restrict yourself by committing acts of blunder. Since no road to success runs downhill, it is essential that you should be prepared to get dripping wet in your work, much beyond the capability of a mediocre person. You have to hold faithfulness and sincerity as your first principles. Sans such a resolution, you will never move up in your career.

Brass tacks of career planning

When people start planning their career, they often encounter a snag in the initial stages itself. A multitude of options lie in front of them that apparently offer money, name, amenities and even security. The list of career options could be endless and which will tend to be very mystifying. It is quite natural that given the uncertainty that is spawned in their minds, feelings of self-loathing will also get generated. However, the state of bewilderment can be overcome by proper career planning.

You have two methods to take off. The first one is to discover what your passions are and go in for a line that is in harmony with them without having any worries about what the achievements and advancement prospects that exist in it. The second method is to find out what really impels you and select a career that offers you whatever you seek. Of course, you will have to acquire the necessary qualitative requirements for them. Whichever method you decide to adopt, you will accomplish whatever you desire. The first method will roll out before you a path that by itself will be a type of a gift or bonus. It is a different matter that many people will not encourage you take recourse to this option. History is replete with examples of how people trudged this path and achieved fame and job satisfaction. And the second method evidently is one wherein you gradually move forward towards your objectives that invariably could be enunciated as an outcome of your hard slog as also the career line in question. 

Choosing any of the above paths is immaterial; what is of prime significance is being able to discern your fortes and shortcomings. You need to do some introspection with a cool mind and ponder over various successes, big or small, that you may have had and how they enthused you to do better. It is essential that you make a note of all such occasions. You will find, much to your surprise though, that as you catalogue your past successes, a definite design will unfold before you. You will see in your mind's eye activities that you excel at and are at ease with. Every such activity is symbolic of a career option and accentuates your specific uniqueness and attributes that can prove to be real strengths in all career options that you may exercise in times to come.

What you need to do next is to find out issues and aspects that inspire you and which you seek to have. It is something like giving shape to your dreams. You need to discover where you fit in – your position has to be between your current position and the position that you eventually aspire to be in. When this image gets distinct and obvious, you will discover yourself as a more alert, self-assured and focused individual – these qualities will for certain place you in advantageous positions all through your career journey. What you have actually achieved is a well-defined and distinct image of yourself with definite marketable attributes.

Depending upon the intensity of your expectations and also your propensity, you can also look for careers that provide you adequate compensation for a way of life that you seek to lead. Suppose you want to go in for an outdoor routine with plenty of sporting and adventure activities, you could well opt for armed forces as a career. Likewise, if you have a penchant for travelling and meeting people, a career in sales will be a good fit for you. Quite a few men and women get carried away by glitzy fallacies related to some careers but are subsequently required to change their decisions. Remember that appreciation, advancement, benefits, job contentment and excellent lifestyle all stem from only one single thing – you have to be passionate and adoring towards the work that you do.

Once you set your bearings, you need to build know-hows and abilities. Different careers call for different qualitative requirements and standards. Your aim should be to stamp your individual label on it. All this makes it inescapable for you to gather maximum information, learn the financial sides of the job and take on apprenticeships or informational interviews. You will also need to undergo specialised training courses and acquire exclusive proficiencies. There is no career line that does not call for good communication skills and you need to possess them to be able to adhere to workplace ethics and maintain good relationships there.

The crux of the matter is to have well defined objectives before you set out on your career journey per se. The journey by itself will be a learning experience and you will get to have practical acquaintances with professional matters as you keep moving. But the uppermost item on your agenda should be to take your first step, more importantly take your best foot forward.