Turn Your Job into a Career
For many young people today, the biggest Career challenge seems to be getting onto the employment ladder in the first place.
We are often brought up with the limiting belief that the longer you stay in education the better employment prospects you will have. This is not always true, as many graduates who leave education and find it hard to secure employment, sometimes this is due to their grades or attitude and in many other cases because they picked the wrong subject!
The wrong subject
With university fee’s increasing, you don’t want to spend thousands of pounds on a course designed to secure you a career, which half way though you realise “it isn’t for me”
You can get good careers advice, but the key is to find your passion and then get paid for doing it – what is it that really gets your juices flowing? Helping people, complex sums, creating a masterpiece, performing to thousands? You need to ask yourself what will make me wake up every day and shout “yes I’m going to work”
We are all excited about different things, your passion is personal to you and I would add, Once you know your passion, it is easy to find the route to your career.
What if I get it wrong?
Einstein failed his exams and later became the figurehead of geniuses throughout history. Richard Branson was bankrupt and is now a successful billionaire. Elton John took a risk, walking out half way through a concert with his band as he knew that his real desire was to be a successful solo singer.
To have a successful career you first need to know what you are passionate about and then you can ask yourself “what is the best way for you to achieve your career goal?”
Apart from certain professions such as medicine and law, higher level education qualifications do not necessarily open the door to desirable employment opportunities.
I personally know several very successful business people, who quit university to pursue their dreams and they all had two things in common “passion” and the belief that they would “succeed”
Career Planning
Once you know your passion, you need to plan your career path, for some this will be through education, for others their path will be through apprenticeships and employment and for some they will do it by themselves.
It’s not about which career path you choose, it is about identifying each of the steps needed to be taken along the way and committing to your goal, as some days it will be harder to do this than others.
You need to plan the steps from the YOU now to the successful future YOU- How can you become successful? What do you need to learn? What experiences do you need? What resources will help you?
As an example someone choosing to work instead of attend college, may have a goal to own their own hairdressing business – for this they know they need learn about business, become a competent hairdresser and have financial backing.
To do this, they may first gain a hairdressing job, working at the bottom rung of the ladder cleaning up hair and making cups of tea. For some young people completing these “boring” task is an insult, thinking “this duty is beneath me- why should I do it?” Whereas the successful young person with a career plan, knows that one day they will have their own business, and everything they are doing, seeing and hearing is helping them to become a better future hairdresser and business professional and I would add, this is often seen by others as you having a “good attitude” which results in them offering you more responsibility and the chance to learn new hairdressing skills, further supporting your long term career goal.
What is a good attitude?
So what is a ‘Good attitude’? The short answer is that it is a positive approach to the work situation. (As Jim Rohn says, the guy who whistles as he hauls out the trash is worth at least 10cents an hour more.) Show as a Pull quote. Employers say they are always looking for people who:
- Are prepared to take that bit more responsibility
- Look for better ways of doing their work
- Look for extra work they can do a part of their existing job
While the official policy of most employers is to encourage talent and initiative to rise through the ranks, it usually doesn’t feel like that if you are working at the bottom of the hierarchy.
As the employee, you need to look at each task as a learning opportunity, asking “what am I learning from this experience?” “How can I use this experience to achieve my career goal?” “How can I make this task more exciting?” and “How can I be the best at this task?”
Once you start asking these questions to all task, you will be quickly become known as a good worker, with a good attitude and when the opportunity arises to move up the career ladder you can take it, often with the positive support of your previous employers.
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