EP 979 Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter encourages you to take a proactive view of your career and explains how you can explore different options.
I want to talk with you today about who's responsible for your career. I've answered this question before. You. But I would like to go a step further. The behavior that most people engage in when they are managing their career is that they learned from one dissatisfying career situation to a good one to dissatisfying 1 to a good one. When enough bad ones build up, they suddenly go, "I've got to change jobs!" Wrong. There is no thought that is going in there. You are emotionally lurching from one to another. I want you to think of what you need to do in order to advance to the next step. Your employer has their agenda. They're going to want to bring you into situations that serve the business in their particular needs. There is nothing wrong with that, but they may not serve you. For example, I work with a lot of people and technology and, one day, they get a knock on the door and suddenly the be moved to project that is not particularly interesting or they are left behind to maintain the work that they help develop. It becomes this interesting. They kind of hang in there for fear that they are important and there were change jobs or fast but eventually the frustration builds up with the tedium and then they go to change jobs. There is no reason to go through be proactive. When you start a new position, you need to think in terms of what's the next career step for you? What do I need to do in order to get there? Is it more training? If you don't know, by the way, start networking and doing informational interviews. You have an idea? Get onto LinkedIn, do a Google search, search for someone who's already in that role and asked him if you can schedule 15 minutes with them for coffee. Go over. Meet with them and say, "look, I'm not trying to get you the introduce me for job here. I really important to gather information because I don't know enough. This is what I'm thinking of; this is where I am right now. I see you doing that kind of work. How did you get there? What do you need to know or do? If you were me looking at this, how would you do more research?" Just start asking questions. It's a big component of what's going to help you become successful instead of lurching from thing to thing. Finally, if the entire thing is coming down to a career you're not really happy in the career, start looking at a new. one. I was start by looking at what your strengths are, where your happiest, where your most effective. Do some industrial psychology training (do a Myers-Briggs. Do a DISC assessment). Start looking at some of the testing that is out there that can help you narrow down the things that you enjoy most and enjoy least and focusing on the ones that you like most. Maybe it's going to tell you that you need to look at a completely different career. It is going to tell you what you need to do within your existing career to be more successful. At the other day, start adding some tools to your toolbelt. So that you're not just simply lurching from one thing to another with no information and emotionally making decisions.
