The Incongruence You Learn | Career Angles
By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter
One of my high school teachers repeated something to me that I heard quite a few times before.
“You will be rewarded if you work hard. Your boss will see you and appreciate your efforts. You will move up.”
Sometimes it would be said differently but, fundamentally it was the same message.
“Hard work will help you advance in an organization.”
Nothing could be further from the truth than that.
Usually, hard work is rewarded with more work, not a chance to move up. Often, the hard worker is seen as the person who is not promotable or who they don’t want to promote because they are indispensable in the role.
Thus, you become beholden to the annual salary review and the institutionally approved percentage increase, rather than the opportunity to take a step up in the quality of your work in the big step up and pay.
When recessions (or worse) occur, you are often among the first people to be shown the door because what business values is not hard work but the ability to think about how work should be done and do it better. There is always someone available to do the hard work.
My son graduated from high school and started to look for work. He had worked in restaurants while in high school and thought about a career in that field. He attended the culinary program and came out of it having decided he didn’t want to work till three in the morning and live the altered reality of a time-shifted day we are all his friends and family work more normal hours and can get together socially and he is not able to because of the hours demand of him.
He has been looking for jobs where he will have to work hard as part of his job and rarely think about how the job could be done better. Thus, he looks for roles supporting the people who decide, rather than being in a role, deciding how things could be done better or making decisions that affect the business.
That’s natural at his age.
But your age, shouldn’t you have outgrown being known as a worker bee?
Ⓒ The Big Game Hunter, Inc., Asheville, NC 2020, 2022
ABOUT JEFF ALTMAN, THE BIG GAME HUNTER
Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter is a career and leadership coach who worked as a recruiter for more than 40 years. He is the host of “No BS Job Search Advice Radio,” the #1 podcast in iTunes for job search with more than 2300 episodes. He also hosts Job Search TV on YouTube, and Amazon, as well as on BingeNetworks.tv for Apple TV and 90+ smart sets.
I do a livestream on LinkedIn, YouTube (on the JobSearchTV.com account) and on Facebook (on the Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter page) Tuesdays and Fridays at 1 PM Eastern. You can send your questions about job search, hiring better, management, leadership or to get advice about a workplace issue to me through LinkedIn’s messaging .You can also message me through chat during the approximately 30 minute show.
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