People like companies experience recession.
To survive recession companies, employ a number of strategies.
Equally as an individual you need to strategize about how you want to live your life.
You must desire to live a quality life. Aim to live life well.
To do so you need to work and work harder.
Proverbs 14:4 says, “The soul of the sluggard craves and gets nothing, while the soul of the diligent is richly supplied” Proverbs 14:23 “In all toil there is profit, but mere talk tends only to poverty.”
In life people are driven by success not despondence, not wailing, not despair and hopelessness.
Take control of career
These days things are very different. If you are serious about achieving career success, you have to take control.
You have to have a strategy.
You have to implement your strategy.
You have to modify and adapt your strategy based on the results and feedback you are getting.
The thing is very few people; even smart people like you will take the time to get strategic when it comes to their career.
Then they are surprised when nothing happens. Maybe you don’t know where to start.
Perhaps you tried in the past but failed to make progress.
What I have found over the years is when you are strategic about your career you get clarity about what you want.
You put together a plan.
You take action to make progress and ultimately achieve results.
So if you are ready to take immediate action to accelerate your career, take up professional studies with Trust Academy or any college or university of your choice.
Remember hope really isn’t a strategy for career success.
Rick Page (1996) aptly observed that, “Some … people make things happen, some watch things happen, and some wonder what is happening.
The difference lies in having a strategy …..” In your case are watching, making or wondering?
If you are a parent what are you doing for your son or daughter?
At Trust Academy we believe in “Training… for excellence!!!” This is not just our signature. It is our manifesto.
We are focused on our students’ success.
We aspire for our students to excel in their examinations, at work, in their entrepreneurial endeavours, in their spiritual and ethical efforts as well as in their social lives.
We believe in the English saying that a rising tide floats all boats as such we are always ready, through our service systems and procedures, to open the floodgates.
Our wide range of courses and qualifications suit people’s varying backgrounds and circumstances, needs and wants.
The objective of offering such a wide variety of programmes, inter alia, is to help people, as individuals, to rise above the crowd and become a successful job and promotion seeker.
We endeavour to raise, through education and training, people’s standard of life.
Furthermore, we envisage a situation where even the most valued employees realise that their employers are constantly assessing them for their knowledge and skills hence it is imperative that they (employees) aim to stay on top of the game.
Reality check!
On attaining my first degree I heaved a sigh of relief as I reasoned that examinations and assessment would be a thing of the past.
Years later, through practical life experiences, it dawned on me that life as well as the workplace was equally intense and competitive learning environments.
I realised that in life and at work we are, as individuals constantly assessed in terms of our capabilities and achievements.
We are benchmarked against our peers and workmates hence you hear such remarks as “What does he/she have? A house?, a car?, a family? , a degree? a diploma? etc”.
More so, in the workplace employers believe that employees who undertake learning activities are more able to adapt to the changing requirements of the organisation than those who don’t.
In addition, employers reason that employees who are conscientious about their personal development are likely to be highly motivated and engaged than those who are not.
What is more appealing to employers is that fact that individuals who engage in continuous learning, writing examinations and passing as well as graduating from one qualification to another, are more open-minded hence are flexible, adaptable and able to bring a continuous improvement ethos to the organisation.
That said the next issue is what should I do?
Consider knowledge and skills updating
You just have to keep updating your knowledge and skills. Bear in mind that the only constant in life is change.
Updating your knowledge and skills, whether it’s a requirement at work or not, enables you to keep up-to-date with what is happening in your field.
If you don’t you could lose credibility and potentially expose your company to risks.
There are various ways of updating yourself.
For example, you read professional journals, trade press, attend industry events, conferences, workshops or do your own research.
Also note the rise of webinars, e-newsletters and online forums means it is easier than before to participate in learning.
Employers want to see their employees succeed.
This assertion may be disputed by some readers, but truth be told, that is the reality.
This means you just have to try your level best, using the meagre resources at your disposal, to keep your technical skills up to date.
Doing so enables you to acquire updated information on relevant industry and regulation changes.
In addition, developments in technology has resulted in a better and more sophisticated public (consumer) who is demanding a higher duty of care and level of service.
Also within organisations, modern quality management systems demand that qualified people are in place to make decisions.
In that regard there is a need for employees to appreciate that in whatever they do at work there is an attendant need to combine their general knowledge with specialist knowledge using existing and emerging technology.
Trust Academy offers training courses and professional qualifications that can help you further your current academic attainments and enhance your theoretical and technical skills.
Appreciate the different routes to professional development
In my previous articles I explained on the reasons why some people hesitate, avoid or despair silently until they don’t take the right action to upgrade themselves.
Some people think I don’t meet the requirements, others think I can’t afford, another individual might say “ I heard accounting is difficult or there is statistics in the course –so I can’t take it!”
Such approaches make us our own worst enemies- running away from our own shadows.
Such hysteria and half-truths could be dismissed from your mind if only you took the right step to find out the truth.
In fact, if you think you have a dilemma or have reached a crossroads in your career and are not sure on what to do, it makes very good sense to seek guidance.
Seeking career guidance or career advice might be one of the best things you can do.
It helps you get back on track and move in the right direction.
For parents, instead of keeping your daughter or son at hope because you were disappointed with his/her results by allowing him or her or even accompany your child to seek career advice you may be surprised that there are colleges such as Trust Academy who can offer you career guidance for FREE and help you decide on your next course of action.
If you spend a lot of your time listening to the wrong people, you can quickly find yourself in much greater pickle than you were before.
It is important to distinguish between good career advice built on sound logic and misguided attempts to point you in the right direction.
Work to live, don’t live to work
We all enjoy our off days and family or leisure time in the evenings after work and on weekends.
But if you care about your social life, that much, then you are likely to have an unfulfilling career.
Take note you may end up in a dead-end job you really hate! Robert Half advises that, “The way to avoid this nightmare scenario- and get more out of life as a whole- is to aim for a career that appeals to you and do something you enjoy”.
There are some people who when they get to work they immediately want to dismiss and return home, when they get home they want to return to work.
Such people have plenty of disappointments in their life.
Consequently, they easily resign to fate and start making all sorts of simplistic and disheartening conclusions.
They have a dictionary of negatives from which they derive their vocabulary. Our advice is –know when to give up.
Don’t assume that there is an established “order of things” within life or even business.
Instead bear in mind that, “If you don’t ask, you don’t get” hence if you wait for your or any employer to come to you, then might be waiting for a longer time.
Our additional advice is that instead of waiting take the bull by the horns; acquire the qualification that will help you get the job you want.
If you don’t do that now then you are likely to become a “job hopper” switching from one job to another.
Consequently, this will raise concerns among hiring personnel- they don’t want to hire somebody who will be looking for the exit door in 3 months’ time.
Benchmarking the job market
Given the current challenges facing us as people, it is relatively easy to lose sight of the changing needs of the job market.
As such we don’t see the importance of checking adverts and person specifications for either the roles similar to yours or in line with the role you are looking for.
Or if we do we don’t analyse the job adverts to see if we have everything the current employer is looking for.
For instance, are your IT skills up to scratch?
Could the lack of a professional qualification be an issue if every employer seems to be asking for it?
It never hurts to assess whether you have what the employer expects from a person in your position or the position you aspire to hold.
The best way to get your desired job or position is to show proof that you have gone above and beyond what is asked of you.
Be able to explain that you can add value to the company.
l Herbert Taruwona Mbindi is passionate career guidance and counselling adviser.
His key motivation is to help people make a difference in their lives.
Feedback to: email mbindi@trustacademy.co.zw,Whatsapp 0773 616 665 or call 0712 212 179