02 Mar Career Advice: Things to Remember
Whether you have been in the market for five minutes or five decades, you’re constantly sifting through what’s important to remember in future decisions, and what’s additional noise. The truth is, everybody has an opinion. Everybody has advice. Not everybody is right. They can’t all be. And what’s important information to you, will be useless to someone else. But we offer some pearls of wisdom that resonated with us, and we pass them on to you here. It’s up to you to embrace them or discard them.
Here’s some career advice to consider:
The most important decisions about your career happen when you aren’t in the room. Think about it. By the time you find out that you’re getting promoted (yay!) or getting let go (eek) the decision has already happened. Other people talked about you, came to a conclusion about your role and how it fits into the future of the company, and decided next steps.
When you hear about it, it’s news, not a conversation. This means you need to think about your interactions with people all the time. All. The. Time. What you say to your boss’s boss after the all-team huddle, how you interact with your colleagues, what you did to help your manager prepare for that presentation, feed into your official review, and your casual reputation in the office.
This is not about making you paranoid, it’s just about keeping in mind that what you do when you are in the room . . . directly impacts the decisions made about you when you’re nowhere around.
See the opportunities. It isn’t fair, really, to ask people to be superhuman. So when you don’t get the promotion, aren’t acknowledged as a contributor to the team, struggle to connect with colleagues, or managers, or both, it’s a lot to say look for where else can you be meaningful.
But. Here’s the thing.
[bctt tweet=”If you can find a way, even in disappointments, to see an upside, you’ll probably end up in an advantageous position more often than not.”]
If you didn’t get promoted, there’s a fair reason to talk to your boss about what you can do differently in the future. If you’re having a hard time with a colleague, an open and honest conversation might advance your relationship more than a tepid but amiable understanding.
It’s not about looking for a silver lining in a Disney movie sort of way, but finding an upside that will serve you in the long term.
Communication is key. We used to only have live, face-to-face conversation. Then there was the telephone (ok, and telegram). But now you can instant message, text, leave a Facebook post, blog, Tweet and more. And every forum requires a special skill.
So there’s no surprise that a fair amount of career advice centers around being able to communicate well. This breaks down into a million different examples. Learn how to speak to your boss in a way that they “get” — either be really direct, or favor diplomacy. Use email, or always leave a voicemail. Build a social media presence — but be careful what you put out in blogosphere.
The thing is, in these times, you have to not only find your voice, but manage it well.
Career advice is only as useful as the amount you use it.
It’s not just about which advice you take, but how well you heed it. These are just a few examples of career advice we’ve heard, and we pass it on to you. But on top of that, it’s up to you to hear it, use it, and fold it into your daily actions. Otherwise, it’s just more noise. And there’s enough of that.
