Charting Your Career

Like an organisation or a business entity, your career needs to be planned and work upon to increase its chance to reach the intended target. Please do not assume that the employer will be managing your career.

There are basically 2 important issues in charting your career.

1. Setting the vision or target

2. Working on the steps to achieve the target.

It seem to be so simple and straight forward, but the implication is great. It reminds me of my schooling days, in year ninth, the best student was a girl, and when asked what she wanted her career to be, she said she wanted to be a nurse. And later, I found out that she actually became a nurse, despite her outstanding academic result.

This demonstrates the difficulty of setting the target, if it is too low, you would be wasting your talent, if it is too hight, it would be beyond your capability.

The followings are the 4 steps to create your career map:

1. Examine your current position. Write down the details of the following items:

- job title

- salary and benefit

- key responsibility

- existing skill

- future prospects

2. Identify your long term goals

- identify at least 5 goals. It is important that the goals to be smart, i.e specific, measurable. attainable, relevant and time-bound.

3. Plan your future career

For the next five years, identify the job you are eyeing, identify the skills and knowledge required for the job and link it to the long term set goals.

4. Create a detailed action plan.

Identify the objectives and the skills you need to achieve both the short term enabling goals and identify the plans to achieve the required skills.

THE DOMAINS OF THE GOALS

There are many areas where you may need to focus your goals. The list are given below, which may not be similar to your intended order.

a. Money matter - you may like to put a target of your intended salary, or monthly savings or money related life-style.

b. Social Standing - You may want your career to position you in the circle of the elite, or social class.

c. Skills building - The career can be a steeping stone to develop skills that can be used for other purposes. Some of the questions that can be asked are:

- which of the existing skills would you like to develop or master?

- Which skills do you like to learn?

- which skills will support me to get my objectives?

d. Personal life - The career can be viewed as one of the elements of your life plan. So having a clear objective of your life plan will help you to construct the career plan. Some of the relevant questions in you life plan can be:

- if you had passed away, what do you like people to remember you as?.

- Assume if you are doing to die tomorrow, what are the things that you regret that you had not done?.

The career map, just like the road map, can help you to reach your destination. It will give the logical path and the steps to be taken in you move to reach the destination

Get Yourself Headhunted

It must give us the nice feeling to be headhunted. It is a form of recognition by the other organisation about your value.

Employers are very critical of getting the right people for the important positions in his organisation. They are very specific of their requirements and likely to get the services of headhunters to fill up the posts and they are very particular of trying their best to get the correct people..

What actually they are searching and what are the traits that attract the headhunters,

1. The Background.
Where you come from, your background and social networks are important for some positions. This is because the social positioning reflects the nature of a person. The upbringing will in a certain degree influence the personality and the thought.

2. Expertise in the field.
Before the headhunter does the search, he would talk to the industry and get some informations or leads. That mean the chosen person will be well known to the industry. He may had spoken in a seminar or had written papers. He would be of better value if he had a track record of performance.

3. Value added skills.
In the present global setting, certain skills stand out compared with the others. These are the skills that can transgress across the cultural boundaries. Some international corporations are looking for individuals with overseas postings, wide educational exposure or able to speak the alternate languages. For that reasons, the younger managers are recommended to gain experiences in working oversea.

4. Career Experiences.
To gain sufficient experience in any areas, an employee had to spend some time in that role or function. Depending on the type of job, certain position will require a detail depth. However there are positions that are looking for the breadth. The wider and variety of experience will indicate flexibility and ability to face different challenges.

So whatever areas of work you are doing, do think of the short term objective and a longer term interest.

Thank You.

joha rahman

getting the best job

Reading the recruitment pages in the national newspaper can be an entertaining past time, even though you are not looking for work. There so much information available, some of the advertisements are very informative and eye-opening. It describe the jobs and the expectations, reading them would give ideas on the type of jobs available in the market.

There are also advertisements made through agencies and recruitment houses, with as little information and minimum details, and in some cases the name of the potential employer is not not even given. I would recommend not to consider these advertisement, for all you know, you may be applying for your own position in the company you are working.

With the internet technology, the company can make a headline worldwide. You need an interesting job and the skill to market it. Remember the job that made the headline a few years ago, a job in the Hamilton Island off the Great Barrier Reef in Queensland Australia. The job had over 34,000 entrants.

Another interesting job just creep up.. a premium chocolate brand, Cadbury is looking for a chocolate tester, and the job pays 35,000 pounds. Who ever says that you have to be smart and earn a shiny college degree to get a well paid job.

extracted from Soo Ewe Jin, the star 25 Oct 2010

Tips for successful negotiation

Most of us were not born with the skills for successful negotiation, but it has to be learned. We may not realize it, the skills for negotiation are being learned and practiced by toddlers at the early age. The 2 year old knew very well how to get things from their parents, it work using some sort of inborn instinct. However most are lost as we grow.

Here are five tips to help us to get what we want in a negotiation:

1. Do your Homework.

We need to know and understand the other's needs, wants and their bottom line. Get as much information from the webs, get the important leaders in the organisation. Check the trade magazines, blogs, podcasts and webinars for information.

2. Engage the opponents

Use the initial meetings to gather and recheck the informations that you had gathered. Build up rapport and establish trust. Use active listening. It will be helpful if we have in our team a person who can master what others are thinking.

3. Assess

Assess what you know and what you do not know. Test the possible option using phrase such as "What would you say if... " or "Let imagine that..."

Answering a question with a question can be used as a technique.

4. Recommend

When the time comes, then you or they have to make the recommendation or proposal. It does not matter who start first. But if they start first is in fact better, it is because there are times that their offer is better than expected. If their offer is too low, you can always interject.

5. Document it

The deal is not completed until the document is drawn and signed. Accurate note taking make it easier.

At the end of the day, it has to be a win-win situation. All parties to be treated fairly and each will leave the meeting and feel satisfied. It will pave a path to a future business relationship.

Changing Jobs

When a company is undergoing changes, you will notice that a large number of the staff will be restless and start to toy with the idea to change job. Some may label them as the group who is afraid to face challenges, and some will be marked as living in the comfort zone.

But the reality is different. It is accepted fact that office politic will affect the career of a staff. It would be natural for anyone to promote someone who he trusts, and the trust is built upon the knowledge on his capability and past experience.

How would you approach other companies in the time of changes. Enclosed are some tips on how to go about looking for alternative career:

1. networking
You can start talking to 2 or 3 peoples senior to you in the same industry. Get how they feel about the situation and how best to use you skills and knowledge. They may have some ideas about the companies that are interested to talk to you.

2. Career alternative
Consider other jobs. It is advisable to change either the job OR the industry and not both. This is because changing both will demand heavy relearning on your part.

For example, if you are a Scheduling Manager for an Airline, it is safer to look for a career in other airlines with different job specification OR get a job as Scheduling Manager in other industry such as in shipping.

This is because of the knowledge involved, to do the job well, you will need both the jobs knowledge as well as the industry knowledge.

3. Consider the transferable skills.
Some type of skills such as accounting, IT, HR and Public Relation are transferable from one industry to the other.

4. Basic Search
Ask the basic questions based on the principles of good job search:

a. What is your Key assets and deliverables.
b. Who can assist you and who can open the door of opportunities.

Changing job is one of the main causes of tension and stress. Take it in steps. It is always a prudent practice to accumulate physical resources, like some cash for emergency, to make sure you can effort the transition.