Career is the word that will suddenly bump everywhere once you are on the edge of your Fresher life and ready to step into the real world of Career development. It is an all exciting and at the same time, anxious process to decide what you are going to do in this real big world for the rest of your life. A job search might seem the trickiest process although you know what you are a graduate in and where you are planning to set your future career in. It is usual but not true knowledge the employment industry has spread across our minds that who has the tooth can bite it. Young candidates who are passionate about taking a journey into the corporate world are often made to believe that they can do only what they learned from the book in their last five years. Little did I know that this was completely obsolete in the aspects of one’s career and growth. It is never too late to know that anybody can beat it if the hack is in hand. Here are a few things I wish I knew earlier to reinforce my career and achieve whatever I want to in a relatively short time. This might also help people who are looking to enhance and reshape their career, those who are wondering how to visualize career development and those who are clueless of what path life could take them on.
Ace the People Management
This is the key that would even open the locks of unknown. Any work environment is structured by ‘People’. An organization is a network of people where the circuit function is possible only with strong connection (communication) between each other. Interaction between people is so important that even in this advanced digital world where Artificial Intelligence can create a whole new human, it requires a human to set up the machine.
People management is the skill of handling different work people at a time in your work area, possibly estimating the consequences, targeting best results, while playing your role right and aligning with the code of conduct of the organization. People Management is not limited to vocal or personal interaction. Any form of communication carried out to send and receive message with the opponent such as writing an e-mail, decision making or showing signs of body language can collectively be called People management. Emotional Intelligence studies deals with understanding the Emotions of Self and others and Decision making with respect to that. Once you found the key to how to handle people and their emotions with different stakeholders, see things from their perspective, get the work done without losing your reputation, this is the one of the top skills that will often outweigh the technical skills for your work role.
Ground skills
Skills can be classified into technical, soft and creative and interpersonal. While technical skill may differ with discipline, soft skill most often is on a common ground. Technical skills are function oriented and are an output of educational background such as computer programming, coding, project scheduling, design software, etc. Soft skills are something that none of us are taught in our educational institutions and is mostly derived from experience, intellectuality, and adaptability in learning. For example, a supply chain management candidate role may call in for soft skills such as strong stakeholder management, attention to detail, excellent networking and negotiating skill and value engineering. As we can clearly see, these are non-technical but very essential for everyday function. Soft skills such as ability to detail analysis, excellent communication, leadership, flexibility, and time management are some of the other top skills quoted under ‘competencies’ in the corporate job listings. By attaining some of these skills over a time period, it is nearly possible to say you can find a successful career growth in almost any domain because these are critical Interpersonal skills for any organization to function. Your technical skill may even be considered void in some areas, without ground skills in most of the job roles. In short, without proving some basic Soft skills, your education & technical qualification is not really an asset, but only a certificate on paper.
Devil is never Good at Heaven
This is very important to realize on the way up to envisage our career growth. It is no wrong that we sometimes do not happen to like what we do in our regular work or study. A pessimist who is always insecure about his profession and skills cannot become an optimist who will excel elsewhere. A constant mindset of seeing things in a positive perspective, working on constructive self-feedback, and most importantly working on developing the ground skills that are required in the other areas of interest is significant to achieve bigger things.
As a natural psychology, we might need some change over at times. But it is important to remember that everything does not happen overnight. Hoping that you will learn swimming today and float in water tomorrow is naive.
The mistake most of us make when we think of switching career is abruptly stop putting efforts on working ourselves in the present and starting to believe, we will do better in something else when we get in there. It’s like not knocking on the doors but looking for an opportunity to come and greet us. Remember that the way you do one thing is the way you do everything. There is no way you will excel and be the best employer in Job B when all you do in your Job A is just ignore and not pay attention in developing the interpersonal ground skills. This is called selective neglect mindset, and this do not show any successful results in career growth. You can still find your successful career growth while working on your AOD (Areas of Development), which will only pave way for your future aspects & goals.
Negotiating
Again, this is a common ground skill because negotiation is not all about money and numbers. In short terms, this is a basic version of People Management, but exclusively in technical terms. Negotiating is the skill of successfully being able to arrive at the most profitable agreement between two or more parties after several rounds of discussions. Negotiations often are aimed at creating a win-win situation, except in some cases compelling the agreement of parties under unavoidable circumstances foreseeing the future benefits. The skill of negotiation does not come in one day. It is gained over time from studying and witnessing the analytics and feasible consequences of the subjective situation, anticipating people’s ideas, external stakeholder’s opportunities and risks. Negotiating is not limited to people directly who contribute in Revenue of an organization, but also very crucial in roles such as recruitment process, selection of Sub-agencies, Training scheme acquisition, Backend support offices, etc. Once you are a master of this skill, you are already close to excelling elsewhere.
Bridging between book and the real world
We had it all when we studied Math & Geography. But the real world is different. What you studied in the last year of your college may seem totally unrelatable when you enter your work environment. Because the environment is nothing but people. A computer science education can only teach you how to create software, whereas your work demands you to get ‘Real’ things done by the software such as storing the entire database of a multinational company or managing the Information Portal. In such cases, technical knowledge such as knowing a C Language or Programming is just not sufficient to prove your caliber. A smart intellectual shall collaborate his / her technical skills with stakeholder interaction, understanding the challenges, discussing confidentiality with the management, while adhering to integrity and following the protocols. This is the process of building the bridge between the Books and Real world. Books can bear you the torch under the tunnel, but getting out of the tunnel with all the light is a massive effort of perseverance, practical knowledge, and self-awareness.
The Power of Personality
While we talk about all the soft skills, here is the most important of all. The way you present yourself and how you are perceived plays a crucial role in your career growth before putting your skillset on the table. Personality is ignored by most people thinking that all they need is to demonstrate the skill to become successful. The first thing somebody notices even before what you can bring to your profile is the way you look, speak, and express yourself. Personality is not just defined by the clothes you wear or the statement accessories you carry. It is something more than that.
Little gestures like being confident in a crowd of people, your day-to-day style of interaction with your co-workers, your posture and response to speech matter a lot. Your soft skills may give you appreciation, but your personality will elevate them.
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