Career Success in Today’s World
Today’s world is different from the world that our parents started work in – today, hard work and dedication are very important, but so are networking, career goal setting and complementing technical skill development with soft skill development are critical for success.
What I’ve learnt is that networking isn’t about collecting business cards – but about forming friendships, and perhaps most importantly, about finding ways to leverage yourself or your business to bring benefit to others, who will in turn do the same for you one day. Sure, it can be intimidating initially because it’s making yourself vulnerable, but seeking to be authentic and remembering that it’s not about you at all, it’s about the other person can help take a bit of the pressure off.
These days we have an abundance of choice – choice about where to work, how to work, who to work for, etc. In a world like this where we spend more time planning our vacations than our careers, I think it’s incredibly important to think about where we want to be in the future, and what the useful stepping stones to get us there will be. This helps take some of the subjectivity out of it, and also helps us stay engaged with our dreams, our hopes and to harness ambition.
In today’s world, I’m also finding that there is an abundance of competition when we look for jobs. I’ve found that focusing on developing soft skills alongside technical capabilities can help really give us that edge to take us further in our careers, both in terms of job satisfaction, job success and career development.
Perhaps the most important factor in determining career success is, however, understanding what success means to you. Some useful things to contemplate in this regard could be:
What is it that you really want to get out of your career?
What trajectory do you want your career to take?
What are the minimum ‘must haves’ that you need, and what are the ‘nice to haves’ that will be the cherry on top?
What is the difference between what success will look like for you, and what success will look like for your family or friends? How can you reconcile this?