How to Choose the Better and Right Career Path

Most of us find our eight-to-ten-hour jobs very monotonous and tiring. We tend to simply complete our work like machines. The chances of making mistakes and experiencing a decline in performance also increase.

People who do not explore their real interests at an early age tend to get lost in a lifetime of dissatisfaction and unhappiness.

Pursue Your Ambitions

In the pursuit of contentment, choosing the right career becomes a priority. However, this is not necessarily as easy as it seems. For one reason or another, most of us are not able to pursue our real ambitions. For example, in childhood most of us tend to dream of careers that parents, teachers, siblings, and friends suggest.

By the time we grow up and realize our real callings, it’s too late to start over. By this time, there are more demands on us. This is when we usually realize the importance of choosing the right career path.

Self Appraisal

Choosing the right career path is not all that difficult. You need to patiently conduct some self appraisal and think about what you want to accomplish in your life. A step-by-step review with the help of teachers will help you think about these things. Many colleges and junior colleges offer programs that help individuals make such life choices.

Call the career center at a college near you and tell them what you need. These services are government-supported and are usually available free of charge or at a minimal charge both to students and non-students.

These programs often open up new employment possibilities and new ways of thinking about careers. It’s better to conduct these searches before jumping into a career and it’s certainly better to accomplish this while you’re still young; however, even people who have been in the workforce for some time and are seeking to pursue new career paths can use these tools.

At the right time, with an understanding of your own capabilities and interests, and with the assistance of teachers and career counselors, you can choose a career path that will lead to a satisfying and productive life.

By Tony Jacowski

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  Better Career Solutions

Create Your Own Path: Career Promotion Tips

Tired of watching other workers advance their career as you continue to exceed all expectations, without promotion, in your current position? Successful workers create their own path to promotion; they don't rely on luck. Self-promotion is key to your career success.
If you have experienced this situation, even once, you know that you can’t continue to wait for others to decide when you should be offered a promotion. Even if you are not ready to make a job or career change today, you will benefit from knowing how to put into action a successful self-promotion plan.
Unfortunately, if no one knows how much you contribute to the company, you will continue to miss the next great promotion opportunity. Letting people know that you are interested in advancing your career is the first step in an effective self-promotion plan. You can simply advise your immediate supervisor or a representative from your human resource department, but remember the old adage that "actions speak louder than words," and plan to make a lasting impression.

Create a Career Opportunity

One successful technique is to single out an unresolved challenge that exists in your company. Try to pick a situation that will benefit from your combination of experience and skills. Write a memo that outlines the need you've discovered. Highlight how you will use your skills to resolve the problem and contribute to the immediate objectives of the team or department involved. Send your memo to the person who will benefit most from your unique approach, for example, your boss or a human resources representative.
Don't wait for your organization to discover the same need. By waiting, you take the chance that they may decide to post the position. (If posting positions is policy in your company, at least your name is on the promotion list first.)
Without your proactive approach to your career and potential promotion, they may decide to promote one of your peers. By being proactive, you create a win-win situation. You may gain a challenging, enjoyable career opportunity and eliminate the need for a competition. Even if a new career or promotion opportunity does not result from your actions, you have successfully created an opportunity to demonstrate your value to the organization.You have increased the likelihood that they will consider you for the next rewarding career or promotion opportunity.
Volunteering is another way to promote your career and demonstrate your value while expanding your knowledge in critical areas of your company. Volunteering also provides a great way to earn a reputation for being reliable, professional, and cooperative, worthy of promotion. Keep in mind that while you are volunteering, you may discover a need that you have the skills and experience to resolve. A great advantage in this situation is that by being involved, you know the right person to contact; it may be the person you are working with in your volunteer position.

The more you know about yourself, the more you will communicate about your value to the right people at the right time to promote your career. Record everything that you do to enhance the company's bottom line. Start today by dividing a blank sheet of paper into three columns with three separate headings: action, result of action, and impact of action. Keep this paper with you as you do your job.
Your key accomplishments are probably actions that you take for granted. For example, if you are responsible for accounts payable, in column one write "paying invoices;" in column two write the result of this action, for example, paid in time - no interest payments, and in the third column write the impact of this action, for example, a decrease in the cost of production. Did you think of this action as related to decreasing cost, or did you think of it as doing part of your job? How do you think others view this action?
Scheduled performance development planning meetings provide the perfect opportunity to showcase your accomplishments for career promotion. By being proactive and creating opportunities, you improve the likelihood that you will gain the attention of your employer and the career promotion that you deserve.
http://humanresources.about.com/cs/careerdevelopment/a/aapromotion_2.htm

Network Your Way to a New Job or Career

When Cookie Burkhalter relocated from Colorado to Wilmington, Delaware three years ago, she thought finding a new job would be easy. With first-rate qualifications and more than twenty years of professional experience at Fortune 500 companies, she figured she would land a new position quickly by surfing a few Internet job boards and sending out her résumé.
But Burkhalter, an IT project manager, quickly discovered that it wasn’t going to be so easy. After months of applying for open positions, “I never got a single interview from a posting on the Net,” she declared. “Applying for all those jobs was a complete waste of my time.”
Her job search began to turn around for Burkhalter when she realized that the missing element in her job search was the human factor. “Even though I grew up in Delaware, I had been living out of state for a long time,” she recalled. “I had almost no local contacts, so I was relying on postings and ads to find out about available jobs. But by the time I saw the ad, so had thousands of other people, and one of them was always just a little more qualified than me.”

Network Your Way to A New Job

So Burkhalter set about rebuilding her business and social network. She joined two women’s groups made up of others who shared some of her personal interests and hobbies, and began to meet new people. When she let her new friends know about her job search, all of a sudden, she began to hear about jobs before they were advertised, and interviews started to materialize. When she finally did land a new job, it was the direct result of a referral from a friend.
You may not recognize what Burkhalter did as business networking, but that’s exactly what it was. Many people think of business networking as circulating around a room and exchanging business cards. But a broader view of business and social networking is that it creates a pool of contacts from which you can draw leads, referrals, ideas, and information for your job search. You can network without ever attending an official business or social networking event, although attending events is useful in networking.
Texas resident Maria Elena Duron found an executive job as a result of working as a community volunteer. “I was volunteering at the Midlands MexTex Fiesta, and I found myself flipping burgers side-by-side with a board member of the Austin Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation," Duron remembers. "He asked me if I had ever been involved in fundraising, and when I said I had, he asked for my résumé. He forwarded it to the Foundation with his personal recommendation, and three weeks later I was hired as Executive Director for the West Texas Region."

Find Your Job and Career by Business Networking

Your career network can and should contain current and former co-workers, alumni from your school, a wide range of people in your industry, and personal friends. Making time for lunch or coffee with these people can be much more productive for your job search than reading the want ads or surfing the web. In fact, surveys consistently show that 80-85% of job-seekers find work as the result of a referral from a friend or colleague, and only 2-4% land jobs from Internet job boards.
If you have been out of touch for a while with people you already know, don’t let that stop you from re-establishing contact when you start your job search. Everyone you speak to will have had to look for work at some point in their career, and most of them will be sympathetic and helpful.
To spread your business and social networking net even wider, you may need to start making the acquaintance of new people also. Every time you talk to a friend or colleague about your job search, ask for suggestions of other you might speak to, and follow up on their referrals.

Use Organized Events for Business Networking

Attending organized events may also play a role in your business networking and job search, since this can be an easy way to expand your business network quickly. Here are some popular choices for business and social networking events:

• Chamber of Commerce mixers,
• Service clubs such as Rotary and Kiwanis,
• Trade and professional association meetings in your industry,
• Lectures, workshops, conferences, and fundraisers hosted by educational institutions, community organizations, and affinity groups,
• Social, cultural, and sporting events that include receptions or other mix-and-mingle time,
• Private gatherings organized for the purpose of meeting new people and schmoozing, and
• Job clubs.

You will have more success at this kind of business and social networking if you go back to the same groups over and over than if you keep going to new groups all the time. Find two or three that seem to have the right mix of people, and keep going back.

Follow-up Is the Key to Business Networking

If you don't follow up with the people you meet, though, you are wasting your time in meeting them. You may think that once you have told someone what type of job you are looking for, if they hear of something, they will call you. The truth is that if they have met you only once, they probably don't even remember you, and it's even less likely that they will remember where they put your number.
After meeting someone new, send them a “nice-to-meet-you” note and invite them to attend another event with you or make a date for lunch or coffee. Find out what the two of you have in common, and see if there is an activity you could share.
Building relationships likes this takes time and effort, but relationships are the core of networking. The people in your network should be people you truly enjoy interacting with, because if you’re doing it right, you’ll be spending a lot of time with them.
Says Duron, "Don't limit yourself to just networking in your industry; everyone is interconnected. Getting to know a day care director makes sense even if you don't want a job in day care, because she knows so many people. Waiters and hairdressers are often the first to hear about coming changes that lead to open positions. As long as you have your antennae out and listen, you can connect with anyone."
Don’t expect business and social networking to be a quick fix for your job search. It can take time for your relationship-building efforts to pay off. You need to put in the effort to get to know people, and trust that you will see results from it. But the best time to begin building your business and social network is while you are still employed.

http://humanresources.about.com/od/interpersonalcommunication/a/networking_jobs_2.htm

Why Should I Plan?

There are many reasons why you should plan your professional development, not least because if you don’t you won’t appreciate your achievements and will not be able to track your progress. Here we explore further the reasons why it is worthwhile investing a little time now in order to reap the benefits of thorough planning later.

Understanding future needs

Few people are lucky enough to start life knowing what they want to be when they grow up, and sticking to that idea throughout their education and subsequent career. Even fewer are able to follow a precisely defined career path where development and promotion occur at pre-determined stages.
In the 21st century professionals are responsible for their own careers and have to make decisions about where they want to go next. They must be able to adapt to sudden career changes, whether these result from new opportunities or redundancy. This may seem to rule out the need to plan where you want your career to take you, but in reality strengthens the case for assessing your future needs and planning how to gain the competence you will need to meet them.
In terms of your future needs, you should also give some thought to the type of support which might help you to achieve your plan. For example, will you require a mentor at some stage? If so, when, and where would you look for one? What other types of supporters would you want? If you are thinking of gaining NVQs you will need to identify assessors and verifiers. You may also need financial support and/or flexible working arrangements if you are planning to study for a further qualification.
More about Gaining Support.

Business needs

Think about the business you are working in: What is the likely future demand for your product? Who are your competitors? What other threats face your business? What is the research and development department working on, and how might this affect you? What are the likely opportunities for promotion or a sideways move within the company? Companies are subject to mergers, takeovers, closure and strategic changes in output or location; all of which provide career opportunities and threats.
With the pace of technical change, businesses need those who are familiar with the latest technology, or have the capability to bring themselves up to speed very quickly. Keeping an eye on the technical press, attending lectures and talking to customers and suppliers will help you to identify the technical changes most likely to affect your business. Acquiring the relevant skills will give you a head start in meeting the challenge of change when it comes. Alternatively, you may find that a new technology is of particular interest, and want to create the opportunity for a move in that direction.
Soft skills, transferable skills and interpersonal skills are all terms which have come into common usage in recent years. Surveys of employers frequently indicate that these skills are often in short supply, especially among technical professionals and new entrants to the workforce. You will need to have or gain these skills simply to function in most jobs, but if you want to progress to senior levels you will have to develop them to a high level. These types of skills also tend to be very generic - at a superficial level the requirements may seem to differ according to an employer’s culture, but the basic principles still apply. So you need to plan to acquire and enhance a whole range of these skills.
Your employer may have formal mechanisms in place to identify business needs and corresponding development plans for employees. You may find yourself being groomed for a specific role, or part of a cohort expected to progress to a certain level within the organisation. If this is the case, your employer will identify the skills you need to meet their objectives, and may have a structured development scheme to enable you to acquire them over a certain timescale. If your employer has such a scheme but you are not on it, you may want to find out how to get involved.

Career/Job goals

You will need to think about a whole host of factors. Most importantly, your aspirations, the needs of your current and potential future employer, and your personal goals. Where do you want to be this year, next year or in five years time? Doing the same job? Promoted within your company? Or somewhere completely different? You will greatly improve your chances of creating or taking advantage of career opportunities if you predict these needs, and acquire the corresponding skills in a structured manner.
You may have some very clear ideas about what you want to do next. If this is the case, you should be able to gather information to help you analyse the skill requirements and identify any shortfall in your existing skill set. Talking to the person doing the job, looking at the job description and person specification, and talking it through with a mentor, will all help you to gain an understanding of what is required.
On a broader level, you may want to start with a clean sheet of paper and identify what you could or would like to do if you had a career change. For this you may need to do some fairly broad reading. Picking up professional and in-house publications could give you ideas for different disciplines or fields of activity which might appeal to you, or of where opportunities are increasing or declining. From there, getting in touch with someone working in that field is the most likely way of getting a real understanding of the nature of the work, the industry and the skills required. The Sector Skills Councils (formerly National Training Organisations) publish "skills foresight" documents which give a good insight into the needs of particular industries. Specialist libraries, such as those run by institutions, are a good source of information. Your institution may also have special interest groups, or a careers service, who can put you in touch with employers or individuals.

Personal goals

An employer-led scheme is great if your aspirations coincide with what your company wants from you, although you may still be expected to influence the development plan. However, you may have different ideas, and need to take steps to ensure you achieve your own objectives.
On a more personal level, you need to consider your broader goals and aspirations. While these may range from being in a job this time next year to becoming the Chairman of the Board, they will also encompass the broader aspects of your life such as family, community and other interests. Your personal goals may include planning a family, taking time out to travel, or becoming President of your institution! So how much time do you have, to undertake career-related development outside the workplace? Will non-work activities affect your career path? Remember that these activities can provide you with valuable experience, skills and attitudes which may support and enhance your competence in the workplace.
Personal goals could also include the decision to seek formal assessment or recognition of your achievements through gaining an academic qualification or professional registration. You will need to find out whether your employer would be willing to support you in this. If the answer is no, and you are still determined to get the qualification you will have to make some tough decisions about how you will do it, and what the true value of it will be to you. If you want the qualifications in order to meet professional registration requirements, you will also need to think about how you can create a self-managed scheme, and who might be willing to act as a mentor or assessor for you.
http://www.pd-how2.org/2_2.htm

How to appear professional at work

If you want to do well in your career, you need to impress everyone around you, including managers and colleagues, clients and suppliers. To do that, you need to be professional at all times, even though there are occasions when you would much rather turn your back and walk away. Fortunately, there are a number of ways to ensure that you appear professional at work.

Be timely

You may live some distance away from your workplace and you may hate getting up early in the morning; nevertheless, if you want to appear professional, you need to make an effort to be at work on time. While you are at work, you need to complete assignments and tasks in a timely manner, especially if there are upcoming deadlines and your delay will affect other people. When it comes to going home, don’t be the first person out of the door, especially if your work isn’t finished.

Prioritize

If you have a busy job, you may well find that there are times when you need to decide which of your many tasks are the most important and finish those first. If you find it hard to prioritize, then you may need to work on training yourself to do so. You can start by listing all the tasks that you need to complete, as well as their deadlines, and decide which should be done first. If you have difficulty with this, then ask your manager for assistance.

Dress smartly

What you wear to work may not affect your ability to do your job. Nevertheless, it is commonly understood that someone who cares about their appearance is more reliable and professional than those who don’t. Take time to ensure that your clothes are smart and appropriate for your job. You may not want to wear full make-up to work – and indeed, it may not be appropriate to do so – but you should at least ensure that you are clean and that your hair is tidy.

Be tidy

If you have a desk job, it can be very hard to keep on top of paperwork. However, a tidy desk is important, particularly if your work area is likely to be seen by clients. Ensure that you have enough filing space and bookshelf room to store your papers and files and then make an effort to clear everything away at the end of the day. Your tidy work space will impress others and there is less likelihood that an important document will get lost in a pile.

Be prepared

Once you have worked out a way to keep your desk tidy and your paperwork neatly filed away, you should find it much easier to be prepared for meetings. Always make sure that you have read through

http://www.helium.com/items/2058106-how-to-appear-professional-at-work

Working in early years

Early years is a dynamic and vitally important sector which needs high quality staff at all levels. Those who work in it play a crucial role in shaping the lives of future generations. It is a career that you can rightly be very proud of.
A career in early years is rewarding, enjoyable and profoundly important. Most people who work in the sector love their jobs and look forward to going to work every day. Not only do you get to enjoy playing and having fun with children but you are also helping them to develop and learn. Children will use some of the skills they learn with you, such as how to get on with other children, for the rest of their lives. There is no other career choice which will provide you with as many laughs and smiles during the working day.
There are many different roles in the early years sector with opportunities for everyone to start a career, whether you want to work full time or part time and in a range of roles. If you are interested in management, you could end up being your own boss, running your own nursery, with responsibility for staff, budgets and building effective relationships with parents. As you progress your early years career you could aspire to become an early years professional, combining both high level practitioner skills and leadership in a variety of settings.
Some of the work you might expect to be involved in when working in early years include:

• Encouraging children to develop social skills and discover more about the world through play.
• Helping children to develop number and language skills through activities like counting games and storytelling.
• Feeding, bathing and dressing babies and youngest children, changing nappies and preparing bottles or baby food.
• Taking care of children's personal needs and helping them to learn skills like dressing themselves, using cutlery and using the lavatory.
• Ensuring appropriate health and safety and child protection requirements are met.
• Working with and supporting parents and other family members to improve their child's development.
• Observing and assessing children and producing written reports on each child's development.
• Consulting and attending meetings with other professionals, eg social workers, health workers or speech therapists.

If you have passion, enthusiasm, and enjoy working with very young children (birth to five years old), this could be the career for you.
http://www.cwdcouncil.org.uk/early-years/childcare-careers

How to Make a Career Choice When You Have No Idea What You Want to Do

There are hundreds of career options out there. How do you make a career choice when you don't really know what you want to do? Does it seem like an insurmountable task? It's not. Yes, you will have to put some time and energy into making your decision, but your effort will be well worth it in the end. Follow these steps to making a good career choice.

Assess Yourself

(c) Stefan Klein / istockphoto.com

Before you can make a career choice you have to learn about yourself. Your values, interests and skills, in combination with certain personality traits, will make some careers especially suitable for you and some particularly inappropriate. You can use self assessment tools, often called career tests, to gather this information and, subsequently, to generate a list of occupations that are deemed appropriate. Some people choose to have career counselors or other career development professionals administer these tests but many opt to use free career tests that are available on the Web.

Make a List of Occupations to Explore

(c)RTimages / istockphoto.com

Look over the lists of occupations generated through your use of the self assessment tools. They are probably rather lengthy. You want to come up with a much shorter list, consisting of between five and ten occupations. Circle occupations that appear on multiple lists. Circle occupations you may have considered previously and that you find appealing. Write these occupations down on a separate list titled "Occupations to Explore."

Explore the Occupations on Your List

stock.xchng

For each occupation on your list, you will want to look at the job description, educational and other requirements, job outlook, advancement opportunities and earnings.

• How to Explore Careers

Conduct Informational Interviews

stock.xchng

At this point you should only have a few occupations left on your list. You now need to gather more in-depth information. Your best source of this information are people who have firsthand knowledge of the occupations in which you are interested. Identify who they are and conduct informational interviews with them. You can also read Real Career Stories sent in by readers.

• How to Conduct an Informational Interview

Continue Narrowing Down your List

(c) Dawn Rosenberg McKay

Pare down your list of possible occupations based on what you learned from your research. For example, you may not be willing to put the time and energy into preparing for an occupation for which an advanced degree is required, or you may consider the earnings for a particular occupation inadequate.

Set Your Goals

(c) Shannon Long / istockphoto.com

By now you should have decided on one occupation you want to pursue. It's time to put a plan into place so you can eventually find a job in that field, but first you will need to set some goals.

• Setting Goals

Write a Career Action Plan

(c) Peter Jochems / istockphoto.com

Now that you have set your goals, you will need to decide how to reach them. A career action plan will help guide you as you pursue your long and short term goals.

• Writing Career Action Plans

Train for Your New Career

(c) John Cardwell, istockphoto.com

It is likely you will have to train for your new career. That could take the form of earning a degree, doing an internship or taking courses to learn some new skills.
 http://careerplanning.about.com/od/careerchoicechan/tp/Career-Choice.htm

Create Your Own Path: Career Promotion Tips

Tired of watching other workers advance their career as you continue to exceed all expectations, without promotion, in your current position? Successful workers create their own path to promotion; they don't rely on luck. Self-promotion is key to your career success.
If you have experienced this situation, even once, you know that you can’t continue to wait for others to decide when you should be offered a promotion. Even if you are not ready to make a job or career change today, you will benefit from knowing how to put into action a successful self-promotion plan.
Unfortunately, if no one knows how much you contribute to the company, you will continue to miss the next great promotion opportunity. Letting people know that you are interested in advancing your career is the first step in an effective self-promotion plan. You can simply advise your immediate supervisor or a representative from your human resource department, but remember the old adage that "actions speak louder than words," and plan to make a lasting impression.

Create a Career Opportunity

One successful technique is to single out an unresolved challenge that exists in your company. Try to pick a situation that will benefit from your combination of experience and skills. Write a memo that outlines the need you've discovered. Highlight how you will use your skills to resolve the problem and contribute to the immediate objectives of the team or department involved. Send your memo to the person who will benefit most from your unique approach, for example, your boss or a human resources representative.
Don't wait for your organization to discover the same need. By waiting, you take the chance that they may decide to post the position. (If posting positions is policy in your company, at least your name is on the promotion list first.)
Without your proactive approach to your career and potential promotion, they may decide to promote one of your peers. By being proactive, you create a win-win situation. You may gain a challenging, enjoyable career opportunity and eliminate the need for a competition. Even if a new career or promotion opportunity does not result from your actions, you have successfully created an opportunity to demonstrate your value to the organization.You have increased the likelihood that they will consider you for the next rewarding career or promotion opportunity.

From Brenda Koritko