3 Steps to the Career Sweet Spot:
I was reading an article by Tim Berry, founder of bplans.com, a site that helps entrepreneurs develop business plans. The article is called, “3 Steps to the Startup Sweet Spot,” and it highlights the ways in which start-up companies get to the magic point of where the investments in their business start to pay off. While reading, I realized that his advice can be easily applied to our careers. We choose to embark on a new career path, we go into startup mode, where decisions on how we choose to invest in the career will affect the results we get.
Photo by Jeff E Photo
Whether you are a new graduate just starting out in the workforce, or a seasoned professional looking for a change, these 3 steps apply to you:
Step 1_The Plan
You need to pull the trigger and create a plan. Saying, “I plan to work” is not enough. You have to come up with an idea of what you want to accomplish. What do you want your career to look like? How will you make that happen? Some people go big, others keep it simple, but regardless of how ambitious you are, there still needs to be an organized plan for making your career goals a reality. If choosing a career path is too overwhelming, then pull back and identify what you want out of your next job. Get the list of must-haves, nice-to-haves, and don’t wants in order and make sure the list isn’t too long or unachievable. Reach out to mentors and get validation that your goals are attainable. Once you’ve got the list, you’ll be able to move on to Step 2.
Step 2_ Funding or No Funding
What we are really talking about here is whether or not to invest in some training or formal education. If the answer is yes, then how much? And, at what price? These days, most professional jobs ask applicants to have a college degree. In fact, for years, there has been a much-quoted study that said people who get college degrees earn significantly more over their lifetimes and are less likely to live in poverty. However, a 20/20 video segment recently indicated the study wasn’t all that accurate. In fact, it now appears a lot of Americans have overpaid for their college educations and will never see the return on their investment. When choosing a career, you have to ask yourself, “What kind of degree (if any) should I get and what will be the long-term ramifications if I don’t get one?” You should also decide if it’s worth going into significant debt to attend a more expensive exclusive college, or if a more affordable degree at a local college will be enough. It’s also important to ask that question of advanced degrees. Daily, I hear of people who are deciding to go back to school for a master’s because they can’t get a job right now and figure that when the recession is over they’ll have their advance degree and will get hired for more money. Sadly, unless you are studying a very specific skill (i.e. engineering), that is not true. Experience still outweighs degrees in most corporate hiring decisions. More does not necessarily mean better.
Step 3_ Launch or Revise
Sometimes people invest in an education to support a career path only to realize they don’t like the career after all. Or, perhaps they realize the career is so saturated with talent that they don’t want to have to put in the effort it’s going to take to get to the top of the profession. I regularly work with college students and recent grads who earned degrees but didn’t realize until senior year or shortly thereafter that the field they studied isn’t a good fit for what they want to do. So what should you do? Get another degree? Stay in the field and hope you can change later when you have some experience under your belt? Or, try to work with what you’ve got and do a career path correction that doesn’t require more money, but rather a slight reduction in pay in order to get a foot in the door of a new field? The key is to not ignore the signs of dissatisfaction. Like a paper cut, the longer you ignore it and let it get dirty, the more likely it will get infected and become even more painful.
By the way, the above won’t work unless you keep this in mind:
When using the 3-step plan to find your career sweet spot, the most important thing to remember is this: no two people will have the same method for getting there. Prior to the recession, we had a lot of people on “career autopilot.” They were going through the motions based on what people told them they needed to do to succeed. They chose professions based on what other people claimed were good choices and assumed it would guarantee us a happy life. In short, when it came to careers, people were getting lazy. But these tough times are making us all get back into shape. It’s time we all started paying closer attention to the way we build our careers. The goal? To develop skills that will make us professionally agile and keep us employable. Not every startup succeeds, but any good serial entrepreneur will tell you it was their failures that taught them the most and helped them move on to greater success. If you want to find your career sweet spot, start thinking like a business owner. It’s time you got your career’s business plan in order the future of your professional success depends on it.
/ By J.T. O’Donnell
www.careerrealism.com
Business 101: Interviews
Interviews:
- Always do your homework. See what you can find on your subject before contacting them.
- Gather a list of questions to help you get started. Usually you will end up with all these great questions but once you start talking to your subject all those questions could get answered or may not apply.
- If at all possible always request for an in person interview. You get so much more out of an in person interview. It also makes you more memorable since they can put a name to a face.
- If an in person interview is not possible go for the next best thing, a phone interview. This still allows you to communicate with your subject in a way that is still personal.
- If all else fails, then do email.
- When scheduling a time to meet with your subject always be sure to be provide all your contact information and any deadlines you may be on. If the subject doesn’t know you’re on a deadline they may not get back to you in time. Always, give a deadline to help avoid last minute stress. People are busy and forget so giving deadlines help.
- Be sure to keep track of your subjects responses. You are the one asking for an interview so you are the one that has to keep track of who, what, when, and where the interview will take place.
- Following up is key. No matter what you do in life, business or personal, following up is the key to moving forward. Establishing a connection is only half the battle. The rest is following up, getting what you need taken care of.
Now, the rule for how long it takes for you to get back to someone via email.
- In the business world when it comes to email, emails should be responded to within 24 hours or less. Unless you are on vacation, sick or something major has happened 24 hours is plenty of time to get back to someone. The longer you wait the more things that come up, the busier you get, and time slips away, leaving you to forget about it. People these days don’t have time to waste thinking about if you are ever going to get back to them or not. If you want the story or the contact, you have to be willing to reach for it.
Save yourself the trouble and respond as soon as you can, especially, if there are questions in the email.