Do you want a Job or a Career?
“The biggest mistake that you can make is to believe that you are working for somebody else. Job security is gone. The driving force of a career must come from the individual. Remember: Jobs are owned by the company, you own your career!” – Earl Nightingale
Everyone has a job – something we believe we are required to do every day. For the unemployed, the job is finding a job. For the CEO, the job is taking care of business and growing an investment. But for many, a job simply means drudgery. In every position, there are all kinds of tasks – some we like and some we don’t. We have some responsibilities we are good at and enjoy and some with which we struggle and and don’t care for at all. The rest of our job-related activities fall somewhere in between. This short essay is not about our jobs. It is about our careers. The question is, do you want a job or a career?
We exist in a dynamic global employment market. For example, today we are seeing a change and a subsequent increase in demand for highly specialized skills. Some jobs are being replaced by equipment and technology that create new ways of doing things in a highly automated fashion. Over the past 20 years, many “big strong guy” jobs have been replaced with skilled technicians who operate sophisticated equipment. Recently, we have seen many clerical jobs being eliminated as a result of office automation. Most of us can only guess at the changes that will be coming in the future. Our task is to determine how we can position ourselves for the changes that are inevitably coming and maintain our market value and readiness in every climate.
“Chance favors the prepared mind.” – Louis Pasteur
One of the most important things to look at is our innate talents and gifts. We have a propensity toward certain things that turn us on or that represent a well-honed career path. But our interests and track records don’t necessarily reflect our strengths – especially if we have not had the opportunity to combine them with experience. Nevertheless, our tendency toward certain job or activity types helps us to identify requisite skills. By cultivating these skills and self-assessing our effectiveness over time, we can achieve greater job satisfaction.
The Gallup organization has several “Strengths Finders” books. After purchasing one of the books, you can take a free online assessment to discover your top five talents from a list of more than 30 possibilities. Gallup has found that next to your immediate supervisor, individuals who experience the greatest job satisfaction are those who work in positions that utilize their strengths. Working in areas that require you to focus on your weaknesses will significantly diminish your job satisfaction. If you step back and consider some of the positions you’ve held over the course of your career, you know this to be the case.
You can add the most value to any organization when you utilize and contribute your strengths – whether you are working for an employer or working for yourself and serving a customer/client. Of course there are careers that require certain skills. The task at hand is to meld your talents with those positions that require their use so as to achieve a good fit. Determining what’s needed in a certain role today is important, but it is also critical to look at where tomorrow’s jobs are going so that you can plan ahead and build on both your strengths and your skills as needed. Furthermore, it is extremely useful to explore the occupations of the future that would require your innate strengths.
“If you wish to achieve worthwhile things in your personal and career life, you must become a worthwhile person in your own self-development.” – Brian Tracy
Sharpening the Saw
This is Stephen Covey’s 7th Habit. What do you do to get better in your career? Most prospective employers appreciate a person who is constantly learning and growing but that takes effort on your part. What books have you read? What courses have you taken? What seminars have you attended? Given the fact that the requirements of almost every job are changing, it is imperative that you develop the flexibility and agility to learn new things and have a mindset of constantly getting better – in all areas of your life, but especially in your career. This is true for everyone in a company, even CEOs. We live in a non-static environment and the world is more competitive than it has ever been. My belief is that we must be continuous learners lest we become obsolete and irrelevant. The more resistant we are to accepting that concept, the more at risk we are for winning those opportunities that allow us to be productive human beings.
“I don't want other people to decide who I am. I want to decide that for myself. I want to avoid becoming too styled and too 'done' and too generic. You see people as they go through their career, and they just become more and more like everyone else.” – Emma Watson
Communication Is Critical
Ideally, you don’t want to be another banana in the bunch when you think about your career. You want to manage your career instead of being managed by a job requirement. To do that you need to dig deeper. You want to be able to communicate your differentiation and your value proposition to the potential consumer of your services – your employer, your customer/client, or both. (See my essay What is your Value Proposition? for guidance on developing your value proposition). The default document is always the resume. Based on my experience, about 90% of the resumes that I read when I was in executive search did not do a good job of describing the individual professional. Many were confusing, slopped together, poorly organized and lacking organizational structure.
Frankly, most people need someone who is qualified to look at their resume and help them put together a document of substance that is easy to read. The last thing I want to say about a resume is that you should be able to enumerate and quantify your accomplishments in addition to merely listing responsibilities that highlight your work history. The objective here is to communicate how you added value and linking this to your value proposition. Capturing and documenting this information should be a commitment you make to yourself. This is even truer if your career changes from being an employee to becoming self-employed. In this case, you will need to create marketing material that promotes your value proposition and positions you to sell your services I advise my clients to develop a written statement (in addition to a resume) that defines their professional experience and articulates their key objectives in a paragraph or two.. Not every employer who reads the statement will appreciate it, but it helps the professional clarify his or her inherent value and goals. Taking a job that merely requires you to take orders will not bring many opportunities to add value because you will be limited to performing tasks rather than offering new ideas and thinking. As always, keep in mind what it is you want – a job or a career?
Working with great people makes you great; you learn a lot and it also gives you the experience and confidence to move on with your own career.”– Nas
Get on the Right Bus
Finding a place where you fit is of critical importance to the success of your engagement with a new employer. Will the culture of the organization you seek to join allow you to demonstrate your value? As I have said previously, if you don’t fit the culture then two harmful things will happen. People in the organization will distance themselves from you and you will distance yourself from them. I have seen it happen too many times. Here are some useful things to find out as part of the courtship with a prospective employer:
- The mission, vision and values of the organization—ask this of every person you talk to
- The culture of the organization—ditto
- How well you fit in based on your values and career objectives—this is your work
- What does success in this position look like? How will you know if you are doing a good job?
- What is the mission of this position?
- Why is this job important to the company?
- What are the likes and dislikes of your immediate boss?
- How does your work group interact?
Many years ago, I had the good fortune of meeting with Richard J. Thain, the former Associate Dean of Students and Director of Placement at the University Of Chicago School Of Business. Dick’s book, which summarizes my advice to you, is titled THINK TWICE BEFORE YOU ACCEPT THAT JOB. In addition to “thinking” about an opportunity, listen to your gut and your intuitive self. A mistake many candidates make in joining a company is they think they can change the company or their prospective boss. Most of the time this doesn’t work! You have to honestly ask yourself if you are willing to take a risk based on nothing more than a wish.
“Men willingly believe what they wish.”– Julius Caesar
And, there is more, there always is.
Be genuine.
Copyright 2014 © John J. Trakselis, Chicago CEO Coaching
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