The end of the year is approaching, and with it comes the whole end of year evaluations frenzy. As a manager and a friend, I’ve had a number of people coming up to me, from my team and other ones, to talk to me about the coming evaluations, trying to get a sense of what to expect, and asking for advice on their careers.
And after having repeated the same idea in different words so many times, I thought it would be interesting to just put it in words on my blog, and share it with everyone.
I think a lot of people have their priorities all wrong when it comes to their career lives; they’re starting out thinking about positions and money, when instead of that they should be thinking of themselves, their knowledge and experience.
Building a career is just like being in investment, you can’t expect big gains without investing big and investing right, and in your career life that big investment is in yourself, through the knowledge and experience you acquire, through the serious work that you do, and the great reputation you build for yourself. Positions and money will follow automatically from there, as a direct result.
Your motivation should be how great a profile you can build for yourself and how many interesting things you’ll be able to work on; not what position you can get to or how much you can earn.
Working with the sole objective of getting a certain position or more money means that you’ll be losing focus of the most important thing that will justly get you there, your work and how much it matters.
I’m not saying a person shouldn’t have professional objectives to grow in their career lives and take on more responsibilities, of course they have to, but they have to understand that the only way they’ll get there is by putting their work first, building their profile to a point that will entitle them to the position they’re going after.
Another problem that is caused by people having the wrong priorities and losing focus, is that they can also end up taking the wrong career choices, choosing to change companies solely based on salary or position, neglecting the most important point which is how beneficial the new company will be for their experience, how will it build on to what they’ve acquired up to that point, and how will it get them closer to their overall professional goal?
I see many people quitting a certain company, throwing away all the experience they’ve acquired and all their accomplishments there, to start a new job somewhere else where they start over, not making use of most of their knowledge, and not getting anywhere near what they want to accomplish in their lives.
This can also be because of a lack of vision; I think it’s very important for everyone, to take some time out with themselves, and think really seriously about what it is they want in life, where do they want to get to professionally, and not let go until they have a clear picture in their heads.
That vision, that goal, will serve as a guideline for their career lives, and help them in their career decisions, making sure that they only take a step that will move them forward, in the direction of making their dream come true.
I could go on for hours, I guess, but I think I’ll just end this here, having talked about the main points I had in mind, and will leave the rest to another future post.
Good luck to everyone getting to your destination in life.
