What to do to achieve career advancement and relevance

By Adetunji Adeleye

Tony Elumelu,
Group Managing Director, UBA Group

ONGOING career management is essential to success and career self-reliance is key to both growth within an organisation and mobility within one’s field.

More than at any other time, career advancement is predicated on effective professional and interpersonal development. It requires an understanding of an ability to act on new workplace norms and relating with others very well. Staying employable requires vigilance and continuous search for knowledge.

To advance in a career requires the following
• Take charge of your career: Those who expect companies to take care of them, or to “do the right thing” are often disappointed. Chances are, no one will ever care more about your career than you do. The workplace can be fun and challenging. It can also be difficult. It rewards effort, planning and training, but it punishes indifference and lack of preparation. Those who don’t take charge of their own careers, who just let things happen often end up in painful, dead-end jobs, feeling trapped in unhappy lifestyles.

• Your future depends on your reputation, results, accomplishments, people skills, contributions and friendships you have made. If you have been a contributor, a kindhearted fellow and easy to work with, you will always be in demand. Everyday your actions lay the groundwork for what will happen to you when you leave that job and you are asked to go. No career consultant in the world can create close friendships and a good reputation for you if you have not laid the groundwork yourself.

• Don’t lose your friends, even distant friends are your best allies in your life and career, especially in job hunting. No one will help you more than those who already know you. So make an extensive list of your business and personal contacts (essentially, everyone you have met), and stay in touch with them, even after you have found new job. Former Chief Justice of the Federation, Justice Alfa Belgore, during his farewell ceremony and valedictory speech said he had never lost a friend. Employers hire their friends. Only when they run out of familiar faces do they consider hiring strangers. When companies recruit from a group of outsiders, they interview, test and screen heavily. Your best career strategy besides keeping your skills up-to-date and achieving a lot is to cultivate deep, long lasting friendships.

• Your accomplishments are your calling card for the future. They will help to determine your marketability. In selling yourself, it is results that count. Try to contribute something substanstial and measurable every single day. Make sure you keep a written record of your results.

• Do not stay in a job you hate. Hating your daily routine can ruin your health and it can make everyone around you, including your spouse and family, miserable. Take a risk and quit that job.

• Too much success without balance can kill. Learn when enough is enough. If you think you are burning out, you may be right. Highly successful people are the most subject to burnout. They demand too much from themselves and from everyone around them. Seek balance in everything you do.

• Changing fields, industries, or functional specialities is difficult, and the bigger the change, the more difficult it is. If you are not coming from the same industry, it may be difficult switching career. Therefore, choose your direction carefully. Once you leave a career path to try something new, it may be difficult to re-enter. You will look like a “traitor” to insiders, and you will be competing with those who have stayed.

• Think of your career as a public relations campaign, much like running for political office. Your goal should be to get many people to like you as quickly as possible and keep liking you. Therefore, every person—male, female, old, young, is important. Treat all others with kindness and respect. Make life a little easier for those around you, and your career will benefit.

• Be careful expressing strong emotions in business, especially, anger and disappointment. Communicate your feelings quietly and tactfully. Don’t explode, threaten, or attack others publicly. Don’t tell opponents off, even if it will feel great. Burning bridges damages your reputation not only with the person you dislike but with the business community at large. Remember, if you make an enemy today, it may take them ten years to “get you”. But chances are, they will.

• No matter your position, whether you are an entry-level officer or a chief executive, a warm, enthusiastic, caring and positive attitude outwardly expressed to others is your single biggest career asset.

• People skills are just as important as technical skills because even in highly technical jobs, you have to work with others. Many outplacement candidates are technical superstars who have fired. They knew their jobs, but could not collaborate or get along with others. Average performers with strong people skills often last longer. It’s better to be a “people person” with average skill than to be abrasive expert who wins at the expense of others.

• Spend time with people you admire. Success really does rub off. There is no substitute for knowing the right people, and for being in the right place at the right time. Take a risk to contact someone you’d like to meet. Staying with great people will make particles of wisdom to rub on you very fast. You can learn what has taken them years to achieve from them spending few hours. This can accelerate your upward career movement.

• No matter the organisation you are working for always have a plan B. On any given day, your present job may end, even if you own the company. Therefore, think short term. Don’t take your present opportunity for granted. Wake up every morning and perceive yourself as unemployed and constantly fight to prove your worth. Appropriate your job, but figure out what you are going to do next if you are asked to go. It is always good to have a plan B. Job comes and goes. No position is permanent but you can out last your office through plan B.

• Except in rare cases, don’t sue your former employer if you are fired or laid off. Take a good look at yourself. Ask yourself what, if anything, you could have done differently. Did you stay on the leading edge of technology? Did you get complacent? Honestly, determine your part in causing the problem. Then work to create a better life for yourself, even if you think it was the employer’s fault. Do not dwell on the past. It is not productive and it prolongs your unhappiness.

• Develop expertise in your field by defining your career in terms of your chosen field. Read about your area of expertise, talk to others in your field. Stretch yourself to anticipate the future and place yourself in it. When possible, write and speak about your work and publish in appropriate trade and professional journals. Look for opportunities to be a spokesperson for your employer, in your professional associations, and in your community work.

• Continuous learning is critical. The love of lifelong learning is more critical now than ever. Learning in the workplace is increasingly key to career viability, for the shifts in the structure and shape of jobs will require you to cultivate new skills throughout your career. The pace with which change occurs will demand that you approach your career as a series of progressive learning experiences, mastering new technologies and advancements in your field.