Ram home your career course

A career can be explained as an assortment of life tasks and functions that you indulge in. You do not pursue a career for monetary reasons alone. Your job is one component of your career, with the others being your leisure pursuits to include your hobbies and even unpaid work as also your people and family connections. All these and several other activities that you engage in invariably makes your life profound and purposeful.    

All of us need some goading to jumpstart our careers. It is possible that you are at a job that you love but it simply is not taking you anywhere and you are always wondering where to go next. You could also be planning to make a radical life shift and wanting to move up to unnerve everything. But you cannot take the required decision for various reasons. You could well be at the start-point of your career, in the middle of it or towards the end. There are some queries that you need to direct at yourself to illuminate your career direction. You need to ascertain if your career objectives are in harmony with the following as relevant to you:

· Disposition & make-up: The character of your disposition and make-up is your innate range of penchants and fondness. Your personality outlook could make you loud and liberal or quiet and reclusive. Likewise, you may prefer to conduct yourself in an organised manner rather than going about doing things instinctively or impulsively. Whether or not you permit yourself to be guided by your emotions is also a preference of your personality. The manner in which your disposition and make-up manifest is generally not alterable and cannot change radically. It is not that you cannot modify your disposition and make-up. You can always make them adapt to circumstances, but the fact remains that whatever is intrinsic will always be comfortable to persist with.

· Ideals & beliefs: Your ideals and beliefs signify your individuality and are centred on your ethnic and family sways together with your individual and personality penchants. When people quit jobs, they do so largely on account of differences with ideals and beliefs. These differences could be related to your proclivity to be different from others; inclination to rally round others; and ambition to acquire money and wealth. They could also be linked to your desire to function independently or work in a group; take on a multitude of responsibilities or work on a single task; and preference for a dynamic or easy-going workplace environment. When you take up a job, you sense whether it will be in consonance with the ideals and beliefs that you stand for. Just in case you were not able to sense so, when you exercise your mind to clarify your career direction, you are able to pinpoint that. You are able to make a choice whether to till a new field or simply allow unwanted plants and wildflowers to grow.

· Abilities & dexterities: Any person can develop his abilities, even if he is naturally inclined towards them or not. You need to ruminate about your abilities and dexterities that you want to make use of; and explore career options that call for such skills. There would be many skills that you dreamt of developing, but could not do so for any reason whatsoever.  There is nothing stopping you from doing it now. It is a different matter that developing such skills may not be a source of money generation by itself. But one thing that will happen for certain will be a boost in your self-assuredness and self-improvement. However, such an improvement can stand you in good stead at your work for which you are being compensated. You may also possess several acuities that you have absolutely no inclination to utilise in your career. It is best to not go in for career options that call for such skills because then your line of work will not be your true calling.

· Concerns & appeals: Your concerns and appeals are generally made use to primarily pilot you into your career’s line of work. Evidently, they are excellent guiding light and yardsticks. However as time passes by and people gain experience, they tend to be more cognitive of their concerns and appeals. You need to be explicitly clear about where your interests lie. Making their use to decide upon a career is a good proposition. However, you also need to think through other spheres and matters like your ideals and beliefs that invariably tend to hold out more consequence and import for your future.

The significance of career planning and decision making is applicable throughout your career journey. A re-evaluation of your current position and the direction in which you are moving is a sensible endeavour because it will provide your life with greater purpose, sense and contentment. You have live a life that is in sync with what you actually are. You will be successful in your life and career if you wake up in the morning and go to bed at night; and in the intervening period, do what you really want to do. And unless you learn from the past and realise that it is no longer the key to future, you will not be able to do so. 

Brush up your cognitive abilities

Imagine yourself ten years back. What were your aspirations vis-à-vis your career then? Have you perceived any change in them as also what is estimated of you? Today, the dividing line between your job and personal life has indeed become clouded. Workload has become intense as a result of which, people find it difficult to justice to their work in the period that they spend at workplace. With burn-out being a common workplace phenomenon, employees struggle hard to survive their job and strike a work-life balance. The workplace of today has transformed drastically, necessitating requirement of new skills to live on and flourish.

Nobody wants to waste time and do things that achieve nothing. Everybody seeks to have a more stable and fruitful life. To be able to do so, you need to gain supremacy over certain skills to preclude any existence behind times and becoming exhausted. You need to be proficient at your cognitive skills. But what are cognitive skills?

Cognitive abilities are brain-based skills that are required by us to execute any task. The task could well range from the easiest at one end of the spectrum to the most difficult at the other. They have more to do with the mechanisms of how we learn, recollect things, resolve dilemmas and remain focussed. If you have poor cognitive skills, the information processing can be rather slow and very problematic. This is precisely why brain training is significant as it allows you to train your cognitive skills. The following cognitive skills are very vital to be successful in your career

· Altering your outlooks: If you can bring about alterations to your standpoints and attitude, you are liable to be more imaginative and inventive. Workplace is all about flexibility and shedding rigidity. You can readily bring about altered attitudes and a changed mind-set by training your brain to use your hitherto fore latent capabilities.

· Regulating your own learning: Men and women who can superintend their own learning and development become specialists. With so much information available, your task is rendered simple. Since no institution teaches the art of superintending one’s own learning and development, the initiative to do so has to come from you and you alone. The truth is that this possible. 

· Sieving information from different sources: The era of today is one of information overload. But locating one that is useful, accurate and relevant from amongst the mine of facts and figures is a Herculean task if you want to keep disturbances and interruptions away. However, you can always train your brain to do that.

· Leafing through documents as fast as you can think: Your reading prowess has to be fast. If you take time to peruse anything, you are likely to be branded as slow and eventually behind times. You have to be rapid reader and learner. Your speed of comprehension speed has to be fast. Today, there are several courses available to develop this expertise and you can always subscribe to one.

· Cogitating & dealing with facts and figures speedily: The human brain has enormous analysing capability; you can thus ruminate over a plethora of information commendably. However, you need to keep your mind open to do so. Fortunately, you can train yourself in this aspect too.

· Systematising & preserving vital concepts & minutiae: Your capacity to be organised is better put to practice by using it concurrently with other skills. This capacity can be improved and invariably paves the way for acquiring correct know-how in any sphere of activity. You can always learn to do all this.

· Understanding the larger mosaic: If you understand what the larger picture is all about, you will be able to understand how details of any activity correspond to each other and fit in sync. You will be better poised to learn new things, analyse matters and resolve problems. And the best of this that you can train yourself for it.

· Focussing on issues at hand: Notwithstanding that we have our hands full with a plethora of tasks, the fact remains that you have to focus on crucial ones to accomplish better results. This is not only applicable to the work that we do, but also to other issues as well. You need to create an appropriate environment for the purpose. 

Work pressures and workplace tensions; and fatigue and exhaustion that are so common today are caused by an absence of all the skills highlighted above. Therefore, it is no wonder that they are indeed qualitative requirements of every job that entails evaluations and decision making. Now, getting back to the question that was posed at the beginning. Don’t you think that if you had the above skills in greater measure, you would have been galvanised to rediscover yourself as things changed? Your answer will say it all.

Personal deficits that stunt your career growth

Success is not simply all about having money, authority or status. You can enjoy all of them and yet feel that you have not been able to attain what you actually wished for in life. It is also possible that you have none of them and still feel contented in life.  There are certain qualities that stand you in good stead all through your career journey. And there are some attributes that are a sure shot recipe for your failure. The latter are generally overlooked by people as a result they make a botched job of their careers.

There are five so called chinks in your armour that can prove to be disastrous for your career, irrespective of your age, position achieved and experience. These are:

· Dearth of enterprise & dynamism: It never rains flowers; if you want flowers in your garden, you have to plant them. You have to take initiative, display enterprise and be dynamic. It may be difficult doing so if you do not happen to be vested with adequate authority or if you do not have much experience to your credit to be able to figure out what needs to be done. You cannot pass on responsibilities to others and work on the premise that you need not display. They say that people who never do any more than they get paid for, never get paid for any more than they do. You should not regard new initiatives as a load and thus refrain from undertaking them for fear of being exhausted or routed.

· Closed mind & rigidity of approach: Your suppositions and beliefs are your windows on the world, but you need to frequently cleanse them off otherwise no light will come in. You need to be flexible and welcome new ideas, particularly those suggested by others. All of us are born with inestimable intelligence and astuteness; it is necessary that you move towards every difference, argument, and different views of your central ideas with an anticipation that you stand good chance of being proved wrong. In this fast-moving world of today, you need to enable change, overcome hostility to it and be resilient in the face of altered environments. That is how opportunities will flow to you. Remember that your wisdom is the handmaiden of your plasticity and change. 

· Inability to treat mistakes as learning experience: Learning occurs through recognition of error. Failure to learn from your mistakes will invariably lead you to commit more mistakes. It is through retrospection that you develop prudence and farsightedness. You must ruminate and swot over them to acquire awareness for future use. Setbacks suffered by you should be viewed as opportunities for improvement; you should avoid cloaking your mistakes and moping about them. The fact is that your capability for committing random bloopers is attached to your capability to attain your objectives. And hence, the difference between excellence and mediocrity, success and failure lies in how you perceive a mistake and take action to ensure it does not happen again.

· Reluctance to be answerable & chargeable: They say that the price of success and greatness is responsibility and responsibility implies accountability. You can move away from your responsibilities, but you cannot move away from the outcomes of moving away from your responsibilities. When things go wrong, it is pointless condemning situations or denunciating other people. You may not have contributed to negative fallouts, but if you carry out a sincere appraisal of the contributory factors, you will realise the abundance of opportunities to do things in a different way. You may not be able to preclude negative outcomes, yet if they happen, you are responsible for them. It is how you respond to them that will define your character and your quality of life.

· Deficiency of life skills to communicate & interact: Interpersonal skills are the most important skills you need for success in your job and career alike. Sans them, you are likely to experience conflicts with your colleagues, seniors and juniors alike. Your ability to use effective interpersonal skills facilitate building and fostering better relationships; you thus enjoy working with others. Irrespective of what your profession is, you have to communicate with and be receptive to others. If you give a boost to your interpersonal fortes, you will be able to bring about more cooperation, mutual trust and camaraderie in your organisation. If you are distrustful, ill-disposed and haughty, you will find these unpleasant qualities reverberating around you because the people with whom you work radiate your own outlook. You need to display your best comportment to bring out the best in the people with whom you work.

All the above insufficiencies are preventable. Remember that each one of them affords new prospects for continual professional advancement and long-lasting career success. If you put to rights your deficiencies, your abilities will take care of themselves. Since you are principally who you make yourself to be and all that transpires in your life is the outcome of your own creation, you will need to change yourself.

Raison d'être of a career development plan

People who lack a focus often find themselves in the same position for a long time because they lack the initiative and motivation to seek something better. In your life and career, it is important to always be on a forward-moving mode; towards that you need to have objectives.  A career development plan is a way to set future objectives for making headway in a selected career.  It is an extremely beneficial resource for any individual wanting to grow consciously and purposefully through a particular career path.

Knowing the method of formulating one prompts you to decisively reflect on your current position and state; the place where you want to be; ways and means to reach there; and the process of evaluating your efforts. In case you have no idea of the direction and end-point of your endeavours, you are unlikely to clock any professional growth and in the process, will always be faced with severe dilemmas. Therefore, the need to have a career development plan is inescapable. The why and wherefores of having a career development plan are:

· You need to maintain an upfront advantage: To do well in your career, you need to be in the lead over others. The fact that everything in your life will not always be fine or for that matter like what it happens to be today should be well appreciated by you. Going as per current trends, people stick in a particular job for not more than three or four years and invariably move on to explore better avenues. This implies that if you seek to manage and improve your prospects, there is an inescapable requirement to be continuously changing and being on a winning streak.

· You need to convey appropriate signals to your company: Today, companies are rather keen to know about their staff who are determined to maintain an upward curve or those who are merely unenergetically exhausting its resources. There were times when you could afford to remain camouflaged, but it is no more so presently. When you do career planning and carve out a line of action for development, you are able to steer yourself on the right bearing. Organisations discern this aspect and thus appreciate your willingness and capacity to embrace change and keep pace with it.

· You need to have career objectives to aspire for: With a career development plan in place, you will be able to continuously assess your objectives and be able to discern if you are moving on the correct personal and professional track. In the eventuality of any impromptu happenings, you can always apply mid-term corrections to ensure that you do not go off-course. It is essential that keeping in mind your long-term career objectives, you split them into smaller ones that could be attained piece by piece in short spans of time.

· You need to draft your own route chart: The career development plan that you formulate ought to assist you in envisioning the level you seek to be at in the ensuing five to ten years. To that extent, it has to be precise and well-defined. A list of actions required to be initiated by you for improving your qualifications should be catalogued so that you become more vendible and sought after. Your career development plan can serve to provide you exact bearings to move on and ruminate over essentials. You will thus be able to decide on the precise ways and means of attaining your objectives.

· You need to let go of all rigidity & be adaptable: Most people do not cogitate about the importance of being lithe at work as also in outlook. A career development plan makes you more adjustable. Your objectives once set need not change, but the methodology to attain them can be subject to alteration. You have parameters to operate within and hence can decide on various alternatives available to you and which will always figure in your scheme of things. On the contrary, if you do not have a career development plan, you will simply be doing firefighting.     

Career development is actually an all-time procedure to manage knowledge, work, leisure, and changes in order to move towards an individually resolved and embryonic preferred future. Making a career development plan entails identification of various career possibilities by focussing within to ascertain your prime interests, values, skills, precedence, make-up and various environment issues that are vital for your work satisfaction. You thus decide upon a path that you can embark upon and which is harmony with you and your aspirations.

The significance and meaning of career development varies from person to person. However, it is an important benefactor for your personal happiness and even financial security. If you spare time to set career objectives and an action plan to attain them, you will invariably find that your job responsibilities and compensation will advance securely. But if you ignore it, you will find yourself stuck in dead-end and unfulfilling jobs. Your career development plan will make you aware of various opportunities open to you and how you can best achieve your work objectives.

Bolster your job security

The term ‘job security’ implies a guarantee that you have about the permanency of advantageous employment for your work life. It generally arises from the terms of the contract of hiring; and rules and regulations that preclude its subjective termination. Job security can also be impacted by general financial and economic conditions.

In your life you will have liabilities and obligations to fulfil. And that is precisely why you learn and develop skills; and eventually take up a job. And once you are in a job, your focus invariably shifts to protecting it. With a job for a lifetime having become history, the issue of job security is more important today than ever before.

How can you bolster your job security? It is all contingent on the following factors:   

· Availability of avenues: In the first place, there have to exist adequate possibilities of promoting your abilities. You need to look beyond your current organisation to discover companies that could be seeking people with skills that you possess. It is necessary that you carry out an extensive survey of the job market to infer if there is a requirement therein or not. You can gain extensive and all-inclusive insight by going through various job portals and hiring sites. If you have to learn and develop new skills, the efforts involved can be tremendous. The entire process can be rather difficult, but it tends to defeat all other options. The maiden initiative has to come from you and it is all about ensuring that your skills remain perennially updated and in demand.

· Being brilliant: When you are at work, it is not necessary that you take delight in each and every facet of it. There will be some components of your responsibilities that will be lacklustre and uninteresting; and fail to inspire you. You may have problems in dealing with colleagues or seniors or even clients, but such problems need to be acknowledged as encounters of tests and trials. In your endeavours to outshine, you have to make certain that whatever is your charter of work is comprehended by you well and that your performance is good. You will be expected to make useful contributions at all times. Today’s workplace is all about teamwork and hence your output will be contingent on you as also them. You will invariably want conscientious and good people as part of your team. Remember that there is no job that is plush and sans challenges; there will be potholes on your career journey. If you think that things elsewhere will be rosy, you will be mistaken. A point that needs to be understood that it is your camaraderie that will matter the most. Notwithstanding your expertise and knowledge, if you cannot gel and pull along well with others, expecting that another company will take you will amount to being presumptuous. It is a real skill by itself working with others and there are no two ways that you can underplay it. .       

· Connections & contacts: They say that if you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail. In all your efforts, you need to prepare well. And this holds great relevance in establishing and widening your contact base too. You simply cannot go about establishing a network at the last moment. It is all an advanced action. If you are well-prepared, you can always serve your moment of inspiration. You can always get into a new job if you excel in your current one, but when people know you well, the process becomes all the more easy. When you establish contacts, it need not be seen as an inconvenience. Your networking efforts can easily be incorporated in your daily schedule. The key point is to always to stay connected; the internet and various social media sights facilitate your endeavours. Having a contact base is one thing, but being able to render assistance to people in your list is another and very important. When you help others, you can expect the same from them.

You cannot take your job security for granted. You need to remain proficient at your work and be marketable at all times. In doing so, you will automatically generate job security for yourself. The driving force of a career must come from you. Your employer will always desire that all workplace problems are resolved, all opportunities are exploited and that the job entrusted to you is completed. You have to persuade your boss and management into believing that nobody can do such tasks better than you. When you create an impression of being too valuable to be dispensed with, you safeguard your job security.   

In the light of the above, you have to get in the habit of making decisions based on what is best for your company. You will need to be on the lookout for tasks that are being neglected and volunteer to take them on. If you are perceived as an employee who makes serious efforts towards organisational growth and who is willing to take on new challenges, your indispensability will stand highlighted. The key to your job security thus lies in good performance and being irreplaceable at work.

Do well in your career

Your career objectives need to extend into the distant future and be supported by a plan to attain them. However, micro-management of your career calls for a number of small steps to facilitate steady career advancement. Such steps may appear to be trivial at first sight but they have a colossal effect in the long run.

To start with, you have to be fully convinced that the line being trailed by you or likely to be trailed by you is to your liking. Your career has to be your own choosing otherwise the prospects of you delighting in it will be bleak. The job that you undertake to do has to be to in harmony with your penchants and proclivities. Going to work day in and day out but sans any liking for it actually serves no purpose and will lead to disinterest and disenchantment. On the contrary, when you love what you do as a career, you will put in sustained efforts towards your growth and eventually towards the accomplishment of your set objectives.

Some simple but highly important steps that you must take towards your career advancement are:

· Be frank & say your piece: You should never let yourself be intimidated into muteness. It is essential that nobody else other than you define you. And towards this, your lips and mouth are there for a purpose. You should say your piece and say it candidly. At work, you will have several opportunities to speak up. You must take an active part in all deliberations and conferences; doing so will manifest your zeal and concern for your organisation. You must make advance preparations for all events. The points that you put across should be pertinent and in consonance with the aim behind such events. You should not hold back any recommendations or ideas that you may have that can serve as value additions. 

· Always be ready to walk an extra mile: It should always be your endeavour to do more what is required. Remember that the distance between someone who accomplishes his goals steadily and those who are the run-of-the mill type is the extra mile. If you remain in recluse or hide behind curtains, career advancement will never come to you. You have to make your presence felt. It is inescapable to shed any reservations that you may have in helping out others at their work or willingly accepting additional tasks. You may perhaps not realise it, but doing so is very important to remain in limelight. Success is virtually and entirely contingent on effort and tenacity. And the best part of walking the extra mile is that when you walk the extra mile, you have at your disposal new dimensions with little or no bottlenecks.    

· Network & share your thoughts and knowledge: If you have a name carved for yourself, there is no doubt that you will not advance in your career. You can build a name for yourself through networking. There will a number of seminars, workshops and other events; each one of them will have immense potentials for widening your contact base. You will thus open up yourself to greater knowledge – both acquisition and sharing. All said and done, interactions and dialogues will broaden your horizon; and the knowledge you gain can be gainfully applied at your work. The road to career advancement will be obstacle free for you.

· Make your presence felt & become a guiding light: When you help out your co-workers, you exchange ideas. A good idea can always be incorporated by you in your working methodology. Periodic consultations and dialogues with your colleagues will get noticed for sure and you will come to be regarded as a good team player. You need to make your presence felt and this is achievable if you engage yourself in various organisational activities, including participation in thinking cliques. The more number of associations that you have, the more number of opportunities you will encounter and all of them will point the way to your career advancement. You will be able to display your fortes and in the process, you will find that many people will come to you for guidance. As a guiding light, the focal point of your efforts should be to make useful contributions for organisational growth. And when you do that, your company too will go all out for your career advancement. You will become indispensable.

There is nobody who is working and does not seek to advance in his career. If you have to really advance in your career, you will have to get out and look for situations that you desire and if you are unable to lay hands on the, create them. You should set for yourself small objectives for self-improvement and headway objectives. Towards their accomplishment, you will have to develop explicit but sound schemas. There is no way but to always remain on the correct path so that whenever an opportunity comes into clutching distance, you can grasp it and take full benefit of it. But your fidelity will matter the most. 

Hitches in selecting a career

One of the major predicaments faced while selecting a career is identifying what you want. Even when it appears that you know what you seek, you may still have doubts about your career choice decision. Dispelling all abstruseness on the issue is perhaps the most significant thing you can do in your career

Under ideal conditions, all individuals will generally be able to identify what the correct career for them would be and what it involves. But pragmatically speaking, career selection can be a very challenging task. From apprehensions at one end of the spectrum to a general absence of discernment at the other, there can be many impediments to the very process of choosing a career.

The more knowledge you have about the difficulties and downsides of career selection, the better geared you are likely to be when you actually get down to any exercise associated with it. Common difficulties faced during the process of selecting a career are:

· Ignorance about talents, ideals & concerns: If you are not aware of your abilities, principles and appeals, you are likely to run into serious problems while selecting your career. This phenomenon is more applicable to people who are embarking upon a work arena, but can afflict any person who lacking up-to-date knowledge or information about what he actually seeks from his career. Today, there are many career counselling institutions where your propensity for different careers can be determined. You can always visit them for help.

· Finding your cup of tea: Every person has his own calling; in fact, his capacity and abilities are his call. No man can succeed in a line of endeavour which he does not like. In other words, a person’s career has to be the just right match for him. That there is only one great career for every person, is a fallacy. As a matter of truth, there are several careers that have similar features and highlights. Rather than seeking only one work path that may perhaps appear to be an ideal match, it is prudently significant to explore an array of options that have analogous attributes. The primary essential is to find out what you are cut out for and what you can do with delight. Your perfect career match lies in one where your heart is. And wherever your heart happens to be, you will find a minefield of gold there. Finding that perfect match implies discovering that minefield so that whatever you learn as you move along in your career holds some meaning for you.

· Anxiety about fulfilling present responsibilities: Harbouring undue worries about your inability to fulfil any of your current commitments can prompt you to ignore certain careers.  You will have doubts about your capability to suitably assimilate and amalgamate your obligations and career in your life schedule. To illustrate the point, if your domestic compulsions necessitate presence at home, you will not take up a career that involves frequent travelling, howsoever suitable you may be for it. But if you feel strongly about taking it up, you can always formulate a line of action with a cut-off date in mind to fulfil your obligations and render them redundant in the context of moving on your preferred career path. You will perhaps use that aim as an inspiration to adhere to your line of action.

· Possession of requisite academic & technical qualifications: Different careers have different qualitative requirements. If a career that you seek to pursue calls for a particular or higher qualification, you should waste no time in planning to acquire it. Any failure on your part can prompt you to go in for another career that may not truly be very inspiring for you. In case you are unable to acquire the required qualification straight away, you can always go in for a subordinate job in that field. Concurrently, you can pursue your studies to acquire the higher qualification to be able to make your dreams come true.

· Fright about debacles & botches: If you suffer from any fear of failure, that fear will invariably get reinforced. In the context of a right career selection too, anxiety and fear will manifest themselves as problems that will have to be dealt with. You may have serious apprehensions about a career if you bind yourself to it. Trepidations related to the likelihood of not doing well will always be there. You can certainly put to rest such angsts by carrying out exhaustive enquiries about various jobs and their characteristics, interacting with those who are into similar careers and even taking some time off to observe what things are at the preferred venue of work. You will have to look all apprehensions straight in their eyes and supplant them with sureness and poise.    

The point to remember is that you do not have to limit yourself to what you think you can do. You can definitely go as far as your mind lets you. You can achieve whatever you believe. All of us are in the gutter, but some of us are always looking at the stars. Look at the stars and you will be what you want to be.