Archive for the ‘Career’ Category

Shifting Jobs – A Quick Guide

A day in the sun by ncanup

There are three things you should look for in a job.

1. Money – The money should be good, if not better. You should ideally get a little more than the market standard, if not, then even the market standard would do. There is no point in working for less, loyalty to the company be damned. If the company can’t recognize your talent and pay accordingly then chances are it will never recognize them.

2. Good work – You should have job satisfaction.period. In todays environment its difficult for organisations to always provide you with challenging work. Also, you’ll burnout if you are constantly working on challenging assignments. But there should be a healthy mix and match. Work should consist of normal mundane work with intermittent challenging work that helps you grow professionally.

3. Supportive, Open environment – Yes, you should have a good boss(es) who encourages you to grow, gives you adequate feedback when you are in error and stands by you in your difficult times. The same can be said for colleagues.

If any two of the above things are lacking in your current job then its time to quit and look elsewhere. But before you do that just reflect whether you have the attitude, skills and the drive to be a good employee in your current job. And lastly don’t burn any bridges before leaving; the world is a small place.

Hard-code a Few Values in Your Life

In programming hard coding is considered a bad practice. Yet it has its advantages – hard coding improves performance at the expense of extensibility of the program. A person can also benefit by hard-coding a few values or habits. I would say these values need to be hard-coded in to your personality at a very young age – maybe you can teach some of this to your sons, daughters or nephews. Few of the values to hard-code/hardwire are

1. Never give up. Never ever give up. You need this attitude to become successful.

2. Put in the hours. Now a days everyone wants everything the easy way. Work smart not hard is the mantra. Working smart only means making the best use of resources available for you. Working smart doesn’t automagically get the work done for you – working hard will. Hard-code this “There is no substitute for hard work”. Get in, put in the hours and success comes to you.

3. Move on. Success and failures are part of life. You need both and can’t do without either too. But the most important thing to remember is to move on – in either case.

4. Build bridges. Never hold a grudge against anyone. Life is too short and you never know when you’ll cross paths with the other. Don’t let your ego come in between. Make-up or forgive but always build bridges.

5. Have confidence. This comes at the top. There are some who say confidence comes with knowledge, thats o.k, but what if you don’t have it? The thing to do is always have confidence and if you don’t have the knowledge then start acquiring it.

6. Failing and succeeding. Don’t let failure deject you. Don’t be a wimp and build walls around you. No man (or woman, for that matter) ever achieved success without failing in the beginning. Accept that there cannot be success without failure.

7. Just do it! Anything that goes up has to come down. Like wise your enthusiasm will go up and down. There would be days when you feel like not working at all. But I say go ahead and just start doing what you are supposed to do. There is power in starting and within no time you’ll lose your blues and immerse yourself in work. Like Nike says Just do it!

So, my friends, start hard-coding these qualities for your success.
Do you differ or do you think I missed a few that you would like to add ? Let me know in your comments..

Office, e-mail and productivity

Read On…

Getting through the recession

History has a way of repeating itself. Way back in 1999 I lost my job during the dotcom crash. The company I was working for shut shop leaving atleast 75 of us without jobs. It was o.k then. Mostly due the fact that I was a bachelor and more importantly I had no loans or credit cards. Living was easy then, you need few rupees a day for the chai – cigarettes, petrol was cheap and you were a king if you had Rs.100 in your pocket. Parents were more or less ok to lend you that much.

Fast forward 10 years to 2009, another recession year with layoffs, salary cuts and increased workloads. I have a safe job, hopefully, atleast for this year. But today the idea of losing my job scares me. The reason – today I have a home loan, a car loan, a personal loan and a couple of credit cards with moderate balances, family to feed and kids to educate. The thought of losing my job is like a nightmare.

But living through the recession taught me a thing or two. These tips are not for saving you from pink slips during recession, rather they are guidelines that need to be followed in normal times. Follow these guidelines and its highly unlikely that you would need to face the pink slip during recession, unless, ofcourse your company is so badly hit that it has to shut shop.

1. Avoid getting a job in the first place – Seriously, do this and you’ll never have to face the pink slip. Instead of a job become an entreprenuer or a free lancer or a consultant/guru in your choosen area. This has been put in a very clear manner by Steve Pavlina in his blog post – 10 Reasons you should never get a job. I cannot explain it more clearly than him.

2. Think of your job as a career – This is especially true for most of the Indian IT workers, who in their pursuit of higher salaries, change jobs like their jeans. Avoid doing that. Companies value employees with long service. Almost every IT company that I know, has some form of rewarding its long serving employees. And believe me they would be the last people in the company who would face the pink slips. The long service award in an Indian IT company is not really a long one, it ranges from 3 to 5 years

3. Job itself - This one is a no brainer. You should be knowledgable, efficient and productive when performing the day to day activities of your job. The more people approach you for help, guidance the better your chances of survival.

4. Soft skills - Softskills like presentation, communication, negotiation skills are becoming far more important in today’s workplace. Having good presentation skills might help your impress your senior managers whenever you get a chance to present something to your superiors. The more you are noticed higher up, the less the chances of facing a pink slip.

5. Attitude - Your attitude towards work determines your survival during tough times. Go getter, helpful, proactive – if these are few of the words used to describe you at your work place then your chances of facing the pink slip are almost reduced by 75%.

Inspite of all these, chances are that your company may decide to layoff you depending on how badly its been hit by recession, management decisions and karma. But don’t lose hope, if you have all the qualities mentioned then you can definitely get employment somewhere else. Employers do verify with your previous employers and shall defintely wouldn’t want to miss out of employing people having such abilities and attitude.

What do you readers think ? Do you think the above advise holds good or you differ, please provide your feedback in the comments. I would appreciate it.

Measuring success @ work

Every year my company sets a few goals for me and defines the measures for determining my performance in meeting those goals. This year they came up with templates, a template for a Software Engineer, a template for a Team Leader and so on.

I hate templates, they put you in a mould. Templates generalize things ( goals in this case) . They have one serious problem, a template can’t fit everyone. I can’t fit in a template because I am different from the person who sits in the next cubicle to mine and so are everybody else.

How can the goals be same for all of us? I agree that they are based on designation, but still all team leaders are not the same.

I guess this makes the job of HR easier, cast everybody in the same mould. I differ!

Instead of templates, establish a framework, a set of guidelines within which employees can set up their own goals. Let the managers sit with his/her teams and come up with specific goals aligned to that of the department/company. Then measure them and see if he/r has met them. Then reward!!!

Is it so difficult to achieve ? What do you think ? Does the company you work for does something similar to templates or something different ? Let me know in the comments.

Getting ahead @ work

I am in the current job for the past five years. My career growth in this job has been stagnant in the first three years. Its only in the last two years that I have been getting ahead in my career. When I sit back and analyze my last two years at work, I could identify a few pointers that have really helped me in getting ahead at work. I am listing them below.

1. Find a mentor
A mentor plays a very important role in your career advancement. A mentor is someone, preferably higher up in position than you are. You should be openly able to discuss/share your career goals, issues that you face, problems with your mentor and ask for advice. Choose your mentor wisely.

2. Understand your job description
Setup a meeting with your immediate manager. The agenda is for you to ask the boss these questions.
a. What is his expectation from your work?
b. What qualifies for more than expected?

3. Get better @ work

You will have to get extremely efficient and better at your normal work. This will ensure that you complete your normal work fast so that you have time left off to take up tasks that fall under the “more than expected” category. You can even ask your boss to delegate some of his tasks. To get a promotion you need to prove that you can handle a higher role.

4. Have an opinion

You should have an opinion of all your work related tasks. Make sure you express your opinions whenever you get a chance;it may be right or wrong. Discuss your opinions, have an argument, but be flexible enough to understand the other side of the argument and accept it if you feel there is some merit. Higher ups always like people who express their opinion.

5. Initiative

Identify projects that have a greater visibility to the higher management & volunteer for them. Regular work does not get you noticed, no matter how efficiently you do it.

6. Communication

No denying the fact, communication is the most important skill you can have in the corporate world. So go master it!

7. Integrity

This is a no brainer. Always deal with integrity in all your actions and speech.

I hope these few pointers can help you in your career as they have helped me. I would like you readers to add to this list and contribute a few more that have helped you in getting ahead in your career. Please share them in the comments and help others achieve their career goals!