Career Development

Considering our careers is an important aspect of career development as we spend around 1/3 of our lives at work. For some people their careers are an exciting part of their identity, but for others, their work is purely a means to an end, and they count the hours off to the end of a week, a month a year.

Some people will want to achieve success in their career, and different people will define success in different ways. Others will see their work as a means to an end and put in sufficient time and effort but concentrate on their out of work activities.

For example, I know several postmen who have a fairly routine job but combine this with a range of activities outside of work, from playing in a folk band to being a living historian. They see their identity much more from these activities than from their work. The people I know realize that if they had a profession, their work would take up too much of their lives and they wouldn’t have the energy for their other interests.

Others want to have career success, and it can be that the work they do now is not going to give them this. Maybe they feel blocked due to relationship issues with a superior, or perhaps they realize that the choice of career they made at 21 is not right for them, now they have reached their 30s.

You are interested in development, so let’s look in the broadest sense at how you can develop yourself at work. Whether you have decided to stay in your current job, or are going to look for another one. There are three broad areas of jobs – people, systems, and outputs. Most jobs can be divided into these.

People: how do you relate to your colleagues, bosses and customers? Do they see you as friendly and easy to get to know? Or are you more likely to be seen as someone moody and unhelpful. Whilst you may get some benefits from acting in these negative ways, what is there you can do to make yourself a more helpful person to have around. Whatever job you do being a team player is going to be a bonus.

Systems: do you have systems in place? Is their order to the work you do?. Is your work-space a mess? Having this area of your work well structured can cut down on the time you spend looking for things and convey a sense of purpose to others. Is their anything that you could do to improve the way you are seen in this area?

Outputs: every job has an output and has a customer, whether it is internal or external. How effective are you in this area? Are you clear what is required of you, or are you giving people what you think they want? Sometimes you can find out that a report you produce each month is not used by anyone, so checking in this area can sometimes save you time.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 11th, 2007 at 6:19 am and is filed under CAREER MANAGEMENT. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.