Managing Your Career
Career Management is essential in the way our world of work has changed over the years. A job now is no longer necessarily for life. It is exciting to update skills, change industry, restart and ultimately always keep fresh and looking forward to our working day. Work takes up so much of our time and I believe it should fit into our lives and our growth and fulfilment. Needless to say, we have to do it for financial reasons – but we should value our skills and what we can bring to an organisation and have high standards in deciding what we do.
In managing your career, you are keeping control of this very essential part of your life. It is important to look at current employment trends and also where your skills lie in relation to your job at the moment. We can often work in an organisation and not even notice that structures and technology have changed. We can become institutionalised when in a company for a long time and believe that nothing will happen. When it does, either through your own choice to leave due to staleness – or a company’s decision to downsize – we are thrown into a new world. How we stay in control and prepared for this change comes down to our own ability to manage our career. Thus, change becomes exciting and not frightening – it becomes an opportunity!!.
No matter what you have done up to now, it is not too late to assess your current situation and where you need to get to. With good career guidance, a plan can be put together together to identify your skills, your interests and ultimately your goals in job and career selection.
When looking for a job or career change, it is hard to see what your own skills are and what you can offer to potential employers. Very quickly, confidence can be lost and we continue to do what we have always done – and so change becomes too difficult. This can bring you down and create fear and doubt. When you are in control and know or have an idea of what and where you would like to be in your working life, then it is invigorating and the experience of looking for a job takes on a positive and vibrant path. There is nothing like positivity and enthusiasm for an employer to see potential in an interviewee. You are driving your own destiny and managing your own career and rightly so.
Credit: Carol O’Byrne of www.careerguidancesolution.com (Career Guidance Solutions) in conjunction with www.pitmantrainingswords.ie