Lately, a few friends of mine are making some moves in their careers, they asked me for my advice, so I decided to give them my observations. I’ll probably refer people to this post, I often use this blog to save me time. One caveat, my experience is within corporate, so if you’re of the entrepreneurial spirit, I don’t have as much insight.
Six Career Tips To Help You Grow
Learn something new every day
When I was a lowly intern right out of college doing grunt work IT application clean up and light UI design, I asked harassed, my dear colleagues to teach me something every single day. They thought I was bright-eyed, cute, and naive and I ended up learning a little about each of the web developers, system integrators, project managers, web managers, web architects, computer support teams. Although this was clearly outside of the scope of an intern, bit by bit, I soaked in each little morsel about web in the enterprise and it fueled me to learn more. Leo Cheng, Jason Martorano, Oliver Cheng, Dave Giffen, John Perera, Kunal Malik, Jeff Cavano, Aileen Cheng, Robert Cartelli were so good to me, thanks guys.
Often, the fastest way Up is Out
Often, the fastest way up, for those who enjoy working in companies, is out. In most cases, incremental raises are often single digit changes (keeping you above the inflation waterline), and the occasional promotion will be low double digits. For those that I’ve met and move to new job positions, outside of their company they can often expect a 20%-40% increase in salary as they join a new company. It’s interesting to see that firms may value outside talent as more important than inside experience talent, in some cases, a fresh skillset or experience may be what’s needed.
Reverse engineer the job you want
Another useful tip is to reverse engineer the position that you desire to be in. Earlier in my career, I aspired to be a web manager, so I took job descriptions of web strategists and looked at all the skills and experiences needed. I printed out the job description (circled the salary) and taped it to my bathroom mirror, I saw it every morning and night, a double dose of self-reflection. Over time, you start to piece together the projects, programs, and apply new skills to learn how to do this. With time and perseverance, your resume will catch up to where you want to go.
Education matters, but not as much as you thought
For very specialized jobs, where in school training is essential (law, medicine, sometimes programming) this bullet doesn’t apply to you. More and more executives I meet have degrees in something they didn’t study in school for. For most jobs, they hire you because of what you can do for them, not what school you went to. There’s a reason why education falls to the bottom of the resume, and the ‘value statement’ is at the top, quickly followed by real world experience. Don’t get me wrong, education is very important, a bachelor degree is really expected in today’s workplace, but I often lean on the broad, theoretical knowledge I gained as a primer (or glossary) for me to dive in deeper in the business world.
You are a company of one
The other observation I share with my friend (and now you) is that you are a company of one. Even though your paycheck is being delivered through your employer, you are solely responsible for your direction, what you learn, how you perform, and how much you’re paid. I firmly believe that you are paid what you’re worth, so when I hear people complaining “they are underpaid”, in my mind, I translate that as you’ve “undersold yourself”, get skilled, spend time on weekends or early mornings to learn more, and apply new projects, programs and skills –or leave. Therefore, you are your own CEO, CMO, CFO, COO, CTO, you’re in control of your destiny. As you can tell, I don’t believe in fate, you are driving your ship of one.
Develop your plan, and put it in writing
If you’re with me so far, develop your own plan, both short term and long term plans, and set goals on how to reach them. Often, these goals don’t have titles or companies in them, but they describe the environment, or the end outcomes of which you want to reach. Over time these goals will change, and that’s ok, but at least you’re looking forward. I learned this from my buddy’s dad when I was growing up, he had several businesses, and one of his dreams was to have a Ferrari –he achieved it.
Wishing you all the best! (really) I want to see you succeed. I get emails about once a month, where someone has said they’ve achieved more, party due to this blog, (but the majority due to their ambition of course) If you’ve other tips, please share in the comments.
Update: Connie Benson reminded me to post up my mantra of “pay yourself first” and “Manage your time as you do money“.
Always remember to be nice to the secretaries – most people forget about them – and when you want something that they CAN do they’re more likely to do what they can to help you than the arrogant toerag who think they’re a cut above the rest.
patience is always the key to everything, thats what I have learned over the years.
I consider “you are solely responsible for your direction, what you learn, how you perform, and how much you™re paid.” to be true.
However, this tends to create friction should you be a new team member bringing new ideas.
If involved in launching new ideas/initiatives, I recommend winning organizational buy-ins and budget dollars.
Both are critical to corporate career success.
Ask questions. Ask for help. People are usually happy to share their knowlege.
Excellent post- a few comments for some great points you made.
There are a couple of more factors that contribute to why the fastest way up is out. We are living in an era where there are simply more ways to climb up the corporate career ladder than stay in the same company/field and expect consecutive promotions over time. We still try hard to climb up the corporate ladder, but now we also have the option of scaling the corporate lattice.
In the current information age, we have so much more precision and speed in accessing the information we want that if we want to switch fields or just scout new opportunities out there, we have more tools available to us. Blogosphere can be used as a sneak peak into new fields that pique your interest, online job boards lets you search for job descriptions that match your interest (or you can looks for positions that fit your interest and pursue those!), research databases can be used to find valuable information about companies you want to work for, and finding like people with like interests to network with. With greater free flow of information, there is simply less of what economists would call asymetric information- when individuals on the supply side and demand side do not know what the other parties want or can offer. As a result, the proactive segment of the workforce (I say segment- some people like the stability of staying in the same job/company and there is nothing wrong with that if it brings them much satisfaction) now have greater knowledge of knowing what employers are looking for so they can go after these opportunities. Were I to live in the age where people found jobs only through referrals of people they knew, or newspaper postings (not too long ago!), I would most likely have a much harder time switching to the online marketing space from a completely unrelated field.
Salaries: Even with all the corporate cheerleading about giving their employees room for growth and advancement- it’s unfortunate that companies pay employees a lot less than what they’re worth even after promotions/raises. Sometimes, this is purely a political issue- some department heads are granted bigger budgets than others and they are usually pressured to stick with it- lest they eat into their own bonus pools.
Education: You’re right, what you’ve studied may not necessarily matter, but it’s important to stay up to date on new developments of the field you’re in and be able to creatively apply what you know.
Great post, this hits close to home.
I am the go to guy when something isn™t working, the consultant they don™t need to pay at consultant rates. To stay or to move on, that is the question. I have not done the reverse engineering exercise, so I don™t have a direction or goal for that matter and that makes it easy to stay put.
Sounds like an excellent rainy weekend project, just my luck a rainy weekend is just around the corner.
Some advice given to me by a mentor:
1. Never stop looking. When you get a sweet offer, your employer suddenly is ready to match, exceed or more, to keep great talent.
2. Open your own shop (virtual) on the side and grow it, so you stay as challenged and sharp as possible for what’s next.
Hi Jeremiah,
I liked your career tips.
I also observed the power of positive thinking, honesty and confidence.
It makes you think inventive in your life and also you feel happy.
Great post. I found it on lifehack.org. It’s really something I needed right now. The funny thing is, I now have to figure what I need to change over from tech support to project management. Hahah, And also why I want to be a project manager.
Great insights.
In the interview, when they get around to asking you if you have any questions, ask this:
“What does success in this position look like?”
It shows that you’re already thinking about aligning your performance to corporate goals…
Borrowing a term used widely in India: adjust.
Learn to review your career objectives regularly to see how realistic your original ideas, time frame, expectations are.
Always move up. Up can mean a lower-paying job in some cases but always advance your skill set.
Develop a niche! Whether its in your company, your field or your personal life find a way to differentiate yourself. It lays the foundation for becoming indispensable, which is a great card to have if you want the ability to craft your own job description.
“Develop your plan, and put it in writing” I think that this is great advice. When you commit to yourself, you can commit to others
“Develop your plan, and put it in writing” I think that this is great advice. When you commit to yourself, you can commit to others
Nice Blog
I would like to have my favourites to the list.
Examine your pastimes and hobbies
Look beyond your current job
Look into new education/training opportunities
Consider your likes and dislikes, needs and wants
And you have to keep in mind that you create you perfect career not others.
An outstanding share! I’ve just forwarded this onto a colleague who had been conducting a little homework on this. And he actually bought me breakfast simply because I found it for him… lol. So let me reword this…. Thanks for the meal!! But yeah, thanx for spending time to discuss this matter here on your internet site.
An outstanding share! I’ve just forwarded this onto a colleague who had been conducting a little homework on this. And he actually bought me breakfast simply because I found it for him… lol. So let me reword this…. Thanks for the meal!! But yeah, thanx for spending time to discuss this matter here on your internet site.