(http://www NULL.flickr NULL.com/photos/ryaninc/1331670163/) When sitting down to seriously think about your next career move, what’s the most standard career management advice you’ll see?
From everything I’ve been looking at, the advice is: Know what you want to be doing ten years from now.
That’s not good advice.
Sure, you can say that you want to be two levels above where you are now. Or working for a particular company. Or even being in a new career.
But life has a habit of laughing at your plans. If you don’t believe me, simply go back to 2003.
2003
Where were you in 2003 and what were you doing? What position? What company? What career? What city? Your relationships?
Then look at where you are today. What position are you in? What company? What career? What city?
2003 and today. How much of today was planned? How much of that happened because you knew your strengths and were open to opportunities being presented to you? Or was an accident born of necessity?
I would have told them they were nuts
Here’s the question I always ask myself: If someone in 2003 would have told me that my career would have gone from “X” then to “Y” today I would have told them (fill in blank).
Most of the time I would have told them they were nuts. But here I am.
If I look back five years ago from where I am today, there is simply no way I could have predicted or planned what I am doing. One or two things here and there, of course. But nothing close to a career plan. Nothing close to “knowing what I want to do in ten years.”
Open to opportunity
The key advice for career management is to continue to refine your job skills, continue to build accomplishments in your current position, and be aware of opportunities for change.
Predicting ten years into the future is a tough business. Better to know your skills and accomplishments so you can grab the next big thing that is right for you.
Scot
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Hah, reminds me of the time when I was something like 13. We had to fill in a questionnaire to try to figure out what we wanted to do.
Mine came up blank
but whatever came up then would’ve been wrong as my job today didn’t exist back then.
I never knew what I wanted to do, I do now, but it has taken several years of discovery (plus the internet) to find out.
@Rosie – I think your case is typical. I did a lot of work during the summers for high school and college and mostly determined some things I did NOT want to do. Not exactly the best way of going about finding a career, but experimentation and trying jobs out is a good way to learn.
Scot,
You probably just had a lot of luck
(Labouring Under Correct Knowledge)
Actually, serendipity has a lot to answer for these days – am sure I read somewhere that the psychologists were researching the heck out of it.
@Mark McClure – True enough! Hopefully, the experimentation was along the lines of skills I thought I had for work. This would help my serendipity!
I’ve always thought of the path taken [either personally or professionally] as being more like a rabbit. You have this huge open space to traverse, the grass is too tall to see “through” so you run as fast you can. Stop and look around. Get your bearings and start running again. Everytime you you stop and look around, your orientation changes – making you adjust your course along the way.
The key part is having a general sense of “where you are going”. If you know that, then making coure corrections are not perceived as being mistakes [which then gets us thinking negatively about our situation] but just what they are, corrections [which allow us to think positive and make decisions based upon the best information we have at the moment].
in 2003, I would not have guessed I would be where I am today. In 2013, I’ll wonder why I took so long to get where I am.
@Arnie McKinnis – “In 2013, I’ll wonder why I took so long to get where I am.”
Maybe not even that long…
Thanks, Arnie.