How can you make your career work for you?
That’s a question that has been begging answers for years. Maybe we can help you, first in the area of money: career wages have stagnated in relations to age, gender and race.
And I’m not talking about the standard hourly wage. Rather, I’m talking about the money you earn at your dream job – that is, something that engages your passions and makes you feel fulfilled at work.
If you want to make your career work for you, start thinking about how you can make it happen. If you want to make your career work for you, you need to sell yourself under the magnifier. That means you have to start thinking of an impression you want to make on your future employer. Your perception, acting, delivering will all be measured and evaluated with your present employer’s eyes and ears.
But … I have a question: How good are you? At that awful truth, the answer is definitely “not so good”. Consider your morning alarm until you wake up and answer the number one question you can ever hope to ask yourself – “If I’m not in chains, I am one-tenth happy to get up in the morning.” Waking up, if you can answer that question, can be your most important work of the day, especially if your career in the field of work you are in or want to be in, is likely looking up.
That is very good to know. Where do you expect you stand with the future employer, along with that future employer’s expectations of you? What does he expect from you through the years? That – and much more, should you decide that you have CHOSEN to be successful in this field, and that is your dream job.
Use whatever means you can find to validate your future employer. You can start by talking to respected people around you to see if you can get an environment where you can vent all those wonderful feelings of communication once you are in the thick of things.
Review the work of future employers and assess whether they offered only what you liked or would you be comfortable doing them? How was what what you did unique from the group and what you did unique considered in comparison to your co-workers? How was what you did unique, both in respect to what you did and how you did it?
If you are a fresh graduate, did your college co-workers on the site have any inclination to give you a better position or larger degree of responsibility because you can show you have what it takes? Did you leave the job you took? How did you choose which school to attend? There are many more ways to get the ‘dream job’ belief out of your head and into the mind of someone possible your future employer.
Use every source you can – students, professors – to find out how to make a great impression. And don’t be shy, you may find yourself in this enviable position to be able to search from the many places to apply.
Once you have a skill or knowledge that impresses a future employer, start out by developing a plan to make yourself visible. You are not the only at risk person in that situation. You may find that someone you know or admire developed that skill at a much earlier point than you and is now prospering in that career field. Then you could consider this a good contact for you.
There are a huge number of resources for finding our of information, assuming a career mapping in a career field can be helpful, is the internet. Find career related information, look up jobs at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as did the U. S. Department of Labor, search careers on the Internet to find a list of the top 20 jobs in the U. S. for 2008 and consider what that job and experience looks like.
Conducting a self assessment that is universally used by many companies is on-line. There are many tools available, some free and inexpensive. These can help you identify skills, best technical functions, and career interests and attributes to what you do.
Get more training if that is honestly within your budget and look into a variety of classes to choose from. You will soon find some of these classes may be within reach. In addition, the Internet is an excellent alternative. Websites and other sites offer many great free courses ranging from careers to health for those with the time and the interest.
If you had no prior job to speak of, it might be possible to learn the skills and move yourself into a good career position. You need only be able to respond to questions asked and do good work with customers. There are, of course, many others that have done very well in their careers as field engineers, food technologists, andistan (lapak303) technologists. Look for programs that you think you might like.