Managing Your Career The Easy Way | CareerAngles.com

You're in charge of your career. I'm gonna repeat that. You are in charge of your career, not your employer You, because you're the chairman of the board of your own institution. In my case, that will be the Altman Organization. I have a board of directors, my wife. That's it, my son has moved out. He's not part of the board these days. But I always look out for him. You have your wife, husband or partner, you've got the kids, the dog, the cat, whomever is part of your board of directors, and you have a responsibility to all of you to look after your career.

Now, I know you're busy. You've got work and you got a life. So this is designed to make it easy for you to do career management. So it starts off with a couple of simple points. They don't take a lot of time. There's only one that really involves any time on your part.

So, the first one is, the person who gets ahead isn't always the one who works the hardest, or is is the smartest, although those are great qualities to have. People get ahead by being alert to opportunities. Sometimes, they're internal to the organization, and they should be pursued. Sometimes they're external, and they should be rsued.

Recruiters may come to you about jobs. Ask them for information. Ask them for job descriptions. Listen. Make a decision. They may encourage you to interview, that's your choice. Maybe you interview, maybe you don't based upon what the job is and how it advances your career. So that was the second point. The first one is you're in charge of your career. That's an attitude shift. Number two is listen when the recruiter .calls.

The third one is periodic touches to the people in your life that you've worked with previously, just to conserve your network. Why? Because if you're aggressively job hunting, you want to be in touch with folks. It's a friendly phone call from time to time. Maybe it's on your commute, you call in the car while you're driving. Maybe it's on the train or the bus, you put a quick call to someone to say hi, just stay in touch.

The next one, and the last one is every few months, update your resume to make sure it is up to date with what your accomplishments are. If you haven't done anything new and you know 3, 4, 5, 6 months, there's a message in that you're getting repetitive with your work and need to step it up at work and start pushing for something different because otherwise you start to mentally get stale. And you don't want to get stale, do you?

So those are four things that you can do. As you could tell, none of them really involved a lot of time. The first one was a mindset shift that you're responsible for your career. You don't outsource it to your employer. The second one is very simple. You will get ahead by being alert to opportunity. Number three, stay in touch with people you kinda liked them before, right? A former boss, former colleagues, whoever! Just call, say "hi, how are you? What'cha up to? How are the kids? How's the dog? How's the cat? And the fourth one, periodically update your resume.

Hope you found this helpful. I'm Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter. I'm a career and leadership coach. I've got a ton more my website, TheBigGameHunter.us. Go to the site. The blog has a lot. There's information about my courses and books there. You can also schedule time for a free discovery call just to do a check in with "a trained professional" who's there to look out for you. And you can schedule time for coaching. I'd love to help you or anyone that you know.

Lastly, connect with me on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/TheBigGameHunter. And I'll also just conclude by saying, if you're active in some way with a job search, JobSearchTV.com on YouTube and Amazon can help you and my podcast, No BS Job Search Advice Radio-- number one and Apple podcasts for job search. More episodes than any other show by far.

I hope you have a terrific day. Be great.