Short Term View

Normally we take a very short term view of our careers and get carried away by what others are doing. We just look at the outside and seldom realise that the reality maybe different.

When we start our careers, salary is the most important aspect for choosing a job, well salary is definitely important but it should not be the only criteria for accepting a job offer - job role, organisation, growth prospects should also be looked into. Even if we do chose a relatively low paying job for better learning and greater long term benefits, we lose patience midways and jump on to low quality high paying jobs. I had read a very good article by the founder member of a prominent consulting firm, it narrated a story of a young boy who joined a low paying job and worked there for 3 years. The boy had one more year to go before rising in his career but due to pressure from family and need of money for his sister's wedding he shifted to a clerical job with double the salary. This was a disaster because just when it was time for him to accelerate he left his job. In this case the boy was in need of money, but had his family members supported him for another year their monetary problems would have been solved for ever. Switching of job at that juncture destroyed his career.

There has to a be fine balance between long term career plans and current salary structure. We should not run after money, once we have really built ourselves as indispensable assets, money will run after us. So, we should have the vision, the boldness and the perseverance to reach the top.

:)

Read between the lines

In the corporate world, communication is very indirect and words are normally pregnant. It is very important to be able to interpret the true meaning of any mail, conversation, statement. The more we understand the corporate language the easier it is to save our jobs and move ahead in our career.

For Ex :
Boss - When I was of your age I never used to be late in office. As a well wisher, I do not want you to get into this bad habit at such an early part of your career.
Actual meaning - Please treat this as the last warning. Be on time or I will kick your ass.

It is very important to read between the lines which will easily come from experience and alertness. It is foolish to take things on face value. One has to be diplomatic and sharp to tackle such things :)

Beyond Job Role

In our workplace we generally do not bother to learn skills or gain knowledge beyond the boundaries of our job role. Eg : If a person is in the MIS team, he or she never bothers to look into anything beyond MIS or even get into the depth of MIS like why this, why that, what if we change this etc...This slows down our growth because we limit ourselves.

I have always been very fond of reading about new topics no matter how irrelevant they might be to my job role. I started my career, in an Aluminium Foil Packaging company IFL - a part of Sterlite Industries, with a short 10 day stint in Finance and then was moved to marketing both domestic and exports. When I became fully involved in Exports I generated a lot of interest for the international non-ferrous market trends and started reading vigorously on the primary metals market which had absolutely no direct link to my job role. My boss used to tell me that I am wasting my time but I did not listen. In 10 months my newly developed passion bore fruit. The global markets became very very bullish and in one quarter the prices reached historic highs. This sudden turn of events made global benchmarking of prices a must and I was the only person in IFL at that time who knew how LME (the benchmark for non-ferrous metals) works. You must have guessed it by now - I became a very important employee :)

The above is just a small illustration of why we should continuously build our skills and should be very well read. Just knowing how to do your work well is not enough. Anyways after a certain time period you master your work, so to ensure faster progress one should always be looking at building new skills, preferably keeping in mind our goal in life. A career is like a jigsaw puzzle, we have the final picture in mind and all our moves should be directed towards putting the pieces in place.