Things I wish they had also taught me at university
Updated 2023-02-15
Background
When I graduated from university with a degree in engineering, I felt confident that I was well prepared for professional life. Soon though, I discover that I had to face situations I was ill prepared for.
Some time ago, I was asked by a newly graduated engineer for lessons learnt that could help him in his career. This made me think and I decided to write down my lessons learnt and share them with the hope that they may be of help to others. Here they are.
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Summary
Success in professional life does not depend only on formal e.g., technical knowledge. People and business skills are just as important.
For instance. For best result you do not only need to adjust your communication to the situation and your audience. You also need to adjust it according to your audience’s type of personality. In order to do this well, you first need to understand your own personality type.
Accept the fact that economy is the driver behind pretty much everything in professional life. Cost and profit consciousness needs to influence everything you do down to the very details of your daily work.
Most important lessons learnt – Find out what personality type you are
In fact, the whole basis for a happy life and good professional career is to understand what type of personality you are.
Concepts such as DISC profile: Dominance (red), Influence (yellow), Stability (green) and Conformity (blue) can be helpful in order to figure this out. There are other models though, such as the one that talks about analytical, social and entrepreneurial personalities. This model, I am more used to.
Either way, there are tests on YouTube. Do look them up and take them!
This will help you understand the broader picture of your own personality which can help to explain your behavior in different situation. This understanding helped me to accept both my good and bad traits. All personality types have both good and bad ones. From there I could work on my less desirable qualities and explore my better ones. Overall, it raised my self-confidence since I saw that my problems were not so much my shortcomings but rather that I was trying to be a kind of person I was not and work with things I was not suitable for. A quick turn in career goal made my life so much better.
A quick shortcut to answering what personality type you are. Think about a stressful situation and how you handle it. That is your true personality.
You are excused if you are skeptical towards this. But observe, there is no right or wrong personality type. It is all about making the most of your good traits and improve on the not so desirable ones.
The tests will list your good qualities, those are easy to embrace. Then there will be some that feel… unkind. Those are harder to accept. But, by stating what your personality type usually also carries, besides the good, you are made aware of situations where personality types such as yours usually have difficulties. By being aware of this and that it is something you just happen to carry with you from birth, makes you more prepared for those situation and can handle them better.
The important thing is that you understand your actual honest true personality. It is only from there you can make lasting improvements to your personality. This will help you select career gool that actually fits you and handle stressful situations better.
This understanding will also open your eyes to other people’s personalities. With this insight you can match their qualities to your own and thereby easier coexist with respect and friendship.
NB! With this knowledge it is easy to assume that you should seek to live and work with personality types similar to your own. Experience has on the contrary shown that you get much better dynamics if you mix personality types and let them complement each other. If you are responsible for building an organization, do pay close attention to this experience.
Take a sincere interest in people around you
Even if you as a person is not very social, you should make the effort to take an interest in the people around you. Professional success comes from understanding:
And for people to function well, they need to:
We are not here talking about complicated things. A friendly smile with eye contact goes a long way. The next step is to remember the person's name and use it. Swedes in general are bad at this. Americans are masters at it.
Here we have a strong link to my first recommendation, the one about understanding personality types. Adapt your communication style to the people you are talking to. If you have taken a personality test, you know what I am talking about.
If you have not already heard of Situational Leadership Management (SLM), look it up and study it!
It addresses, among other things, status or social hierarchy. Believe me, it matters more than you think. As a cautionary example I can mention how a junior consultant praised a senior employee with the words "Good job". The intent was good but he took it as an insult. That he, with long and solid experience, would receive praise from an external young inexperienced consultant.
These things will be so much easier if you take an interest in other people and imagine for a moment that you are in their situation. If this does not come natural to you. Put it on your daily to-do list.
Unfortunately, too many without a genuine interest in people are promoted to managers. If you want your manager careers to go well, you need to do master this. This helps in your private life as well.
Manage expectations
There are people who say they like surprises. Always though, they mean positive surprises. No one likes disappointments.
This means that you should make an effort to never be associated with negative surprises. So how do you do this?
You make sure that you early tell people affected by things that is not going as expected.
Please note here that you must not be seen as a pessimist. But, if you suspect that something is not going as planned, then factually communicate it. You should tell why you think it is not going well and what you are doing to minimize risks and consequences.
Those who receives this warning can then gently prepare for the disappointment, which makes it feel much less serious. In addition, the people you have told will think highly of you. That you are honest, sincere and act proactively.
Just do not forget to tell all stakeholder. To be forgotten when warnings are communicated can make people resent for a long time.
If, on the other hand, you suspect something is going better than planned. Then wait with that information until you are absolutely sure. A positive surprise that turns negative the last moment also tends to raise grudge.
NB! How high in my list I rank Manage expectations!
Learn Rhetoric
Whether you are an extrovert person and talk a lot or introvert and prefer to listen, you will benefit greatly from knowing Rhetoric, the art of persuasion.
That a person who speaks a lot have use for good Rhetoric to get through the general noise of information is obvious. But even the quiet person benefits from recognizing the different ways one can express something. For example, it becomes much clearer whether a person knows what he or she is talking about or if it is just nonsense.
In fact, this thing of quickly getting a feel for how much a person you just met actually knows by the way that person expresses him/herself is very valuable. Since one cannot know everything, one has to trust others and everything that help in determine who to trust is of great help.
Knowing Rhetoric and being able to identify your audience’s personality types and match those, there you have a real winner!
There are a lot of Rhetoric classes on YouTube.
Verbal communication
You are excused if you think guidelines on how to talk is too basic. Everyone should know that. Yes, but we do it differently and if you do it well and knows Rhetoric you will go far.
The first mistake some people do when talking is that they talk too fast. This is a harmless mistake usually cased by nervousness of too much enthusiasm.
If you as listener suspect that the speaker is nervous help the speaker to relax. Say some kind words and make the speaker feel comfortable with the situation.
If the speaker is so enthusiastic and speaks so quickly that it is hard to follow. Simply tell the speaker to take a breath and talk slower. The speaker will usually only appreciate this.
The more serious mistake some people make when communication verbally is that they don’t listen enough. This can be a sign of Narcissism which will be covered later.
People who don’t listen enough either love to hear their own voices or are afraid of silence. Either way, it does not become them since they usually just repeat the same thing over and over again.
In an ideal world all verbal communication follows these guidelines:
This takes practice. Do make the effort to practice your verbal communication. Doing it with a friend helps.
Things to bear in mind regarding verbal communication.
Create value
Accept the fact that the only reason someone gives you a salary is that they expect you to create more value than you cost them. If you cannot show this with certainty, you will sooner or later lose your job i.e., given that you work for a normal profit-making company.
This means that you should always have "What shall I do that creates the most value" in the back of your head.
Sum up what value you have created over the past month and compare it to your total salary, taxes included. ?If the value doesn’t exceed your incurred cost, you should quickly reassess what you are doing and make the necessary changes.
If you yourself cannot determine that you are profitable you should take it up with your manager and get firm confirmation that the company is pleased with how you work and your contribution. At this meeting, try to give examples of where and how you may cut cost and increase productivity. Some things are difficult to set a numerical value on but if you can show that you work with the right spirit and in the right direction, your manger will hopefully consider you as profitable enough to keep.
If you can show and prove with numbers that you are truly profitable, then your salary review can become really interesting.
Business mindedness
Everything you do should be aimed towards generating profit. To do this, you need business mindedness. Concepts central to business mindedness are Business Cases and the reduction of Waste (Muda in Japanese from the Toyota model of elimination of non-value-adding activities).
The principle behind a Business Case is simply to "Quantify the value of something against the cost it takes to achieve it". The challenge here is the word "quantify." But before we go into that, i.e., putting numbers on the value, we should consider that there are two different approaches to profit making namely:
Increasing sales is perhaps what you think first of when you want to increase profits. The negative side of this is that profit is only what is left from the sale when all overhead costs have been paid. This, the profit margin, is maybe 10%. This means that if we manage to sell for an additional SEK 100, we only get to keep SEK 10 in profit.
Reducing costs on the other hand, provides a 1 to 1 ratio between savings and increased profits. ?This means that it is generally easier to generate profit by reducing cost.
However, one should be very clear on that it is not possible to only save cost to achieve profit. You also need the income.
Regardless of what business you are in, business mindedness means increase sales and reduce cost and reducing cost is a more efficient way of increasing profit by eliminate non-value-adding activities, waste.
Business cases
Finding the cost of something is usually not that difficult. In the simplest form there is a price tag on what you want to buy.
It gets more complicated if you need to include time estimates and overheads. But even this is not that difficult to approximate.
Estimating the value of the result tends to be more difficult. Here you may need to take a step-by-step approach as the openness to value approximation differs between industries and companies.
The easiest case is if an investment replaces something existing for which you have a known cost.
It is trickier if the value is based on the reduction of staff. In its purest form, the resource is simply removed and with it the cost. This does not happen very often as it usually involves additional costs such as severance deals etc. What usually happens is that you point out that the resource will be transferred to more profitable work. To estimate the difference between the existing non profitable work and the new tends to be difficult. This is such a situation where one must experiment with what assumptions and estimates are acceptable. Remember though that all assumption must be honest and as realistic as possible.
A "value lever" that is powerful, but also difficult to assess is to state that an investment increases the turnover or profits by X percent. This approach can be difficult to sell to management or the Board. But if you chose a really low X, then your estimated increased profit is easier accepted. Even a tenth of a percent’s efficiency increase measured against the company's turnover is a big number.
Other good "value levers" are quality costs and customer complaints.
Just remember that estimates must be honest and based on best effort. Do not be discouraged if you fail the first time. Just try again. A business case, even based on estimates, is of great help when deciding on what to do and in what order.
In the above example we imagined a major initiative/investment. But this Business Case principle should also apply to your daily work. Always think, “What shall I do right now that creates the most profit for the least effort”!???
Reduce waste
Just the word Waste makes one think about bad things that should be eliminated. The problem is to actually see the waste and do something about it. Within manufacturing, where Toyota operates, it is easier. There you can actually see things that are in the wrong place at the wrong time. In service-producing businesses or office work, it is more abstract. Here are a few examples of potential waste:?
Meetings
Consider the Business Case for an ordinary meeting. The value, that is the positive outcome of the meeting should be greater than the cost of it.
If we take for instance a 10-person meeting that lasts for 2 hours and with a resource cost of SEK 500 per hour. Then the cost for this meeting is 10 x 2 x 500 = SEK 10 000. We ignore room rental etcetera. Then we assume that the company's profit margin is 10 percent.
This means that the outcome of the meeting must generate either SEK 100,000 in additional sales or SEK 10,000 in cost savings.
This does not mean that you should stop having meetings. But meetings should be efficient, which require preparations, both by the person holding the meeting and those who attend. All participants should also contribute to the outcome or they should not attend the meeting.
It is the responsibility of the person managing the meeting to ensure that this happens.???
Another waste when it comes to meetings are people arriving late and disrupting the work. If you are late for a meeting try the best you can to blend in as quietly as possible. If you feel that you must say something. The only thing you should say is “Sorry I am late!”.?
Excuses describing if it was the bus or the train that caused your tardiness only distracts the meeting more and creates more waste.
Processes
Second only to improving the meeting culture, process mapping is the most effective way to eliminate waste.
By mapping who does what (roles and responsibilities) and how handover between units and individuals takes place, it is possible to avoid duplication of work, gaps between activities and inadequate handover of information.
In addition to rationalizing the work i.e., saving labor cost, it raises the quality of the work as misses in the handover of information decrease.
Tools
If you come up with some tool, method or template that saves you e.g., one hour of work per week you may take credit for that one saved hour.
If you share this tool with ten co-workers and they all start using it. Then you can take credit for 11-man hours of saved work per week.
Be generous with sharing improvement tips to your co-workers!
The level of detail in your work
With good intentions, many people spend a lot of time and effort on producing really nice and detailed presentations and documents. The business case thinking should apply here as well. A presentation or document should fulfill its purpose, often to communicate something, that’s it. ?
Sure, information and messages should be clear, but rarely is there a beauty award attached to a presentation or report.
When you see a presentation that is overly detailed with presentation effects etc., you can be sure that the person who produced it did not consider the business case behind it. You may also suspect that the person is trying to whitewash something that doesn't quite live up to expectations.
However, there is something here that needs to be considered. It relates to Personality types.
Analytical people expect more details. Without details and clear background information, they tend to view information as shallow and insincere. Correspondingly, an entrepreneurial personality expects very short and concise information. ?
You need to be observant of this, i.e., the recipient’s personality type and the level of details. Still, people tend to put too much effort into presentations, which does not add the corresponding value.
Straight and simple language
This item should be clear i.e., to communicate with a straight and clear language. Unfortunately, there is inflation in long words, sentences, and complicated abbreviations.
People who use complicated language, often in English, with the argument that the message must be precise, I am always skeptical towards and wonder if they really understand what they are talking about.?Really smart people usually explain complicated things in a surprisingly simple and straightforward manner. This saves time and avoids misunderstandings i.e., waste.
Learn MS Office
It is sad to receive a document where, for example, the formatting is messed up and it clearly shows that the person creating it struggled while doing it. Spacebar spaces is one giveaway. ?Spending time on something you can easily learnt from a YouTube video is waste.??
Protect the brand
Everyone knows the importance of good customer care. Customer surveys are common. As an employee you need to think broader and protect the brand.
It is not only the customers that effect the success of the company you work for. Whether you like it or not, the moment you sign an employment contract you become and ambassador for that company. This means that whenever you are among people who knows where you work you need to act professionally. You don’t need to actively promote your employer, but you need to act with tact and politeness even during non-working hours.
It never hurts to occasionally bring this subject up among co-workers e.g., how a meeting with a supplier went or what you heard a stranger say in a grocery line about your company.
Work smarter
From time to time, you hear managers say that we need to work smarter. When you ask them to be more specific, the answer is often vague, like we need to work faster, more efficiently and with the right things. They also say that we need to communicate better.
There are two approaches to working smarter. One is the “Grand” approach where the company introduces some new amazing methodology. The other is more basic and focuses on traditional development of the employees.????
The Grand Way of working smarter
The grand way of working smarter is highly advocated in media and through marketing as there is big money to be made here. No matter which methodology, there are always companies that back up and sell services for it. It is then in their interest that the methodology is perceived as almost magical and is both very advanced and easy to use.
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This approach assumes that staff members attend expensive training, or you hire expensive consultants.
These trained people or consultants then introduce a long set of new intricate words and abbreviations aimed at making it all sound very advanced when in fact they are just new names on old concepts.
I am not saying that all these methodologies are bad. On a high level in a perfect world, they do make sense. What I am saying is that often the effort and time they take to implement is always seriously underestimated and therefore has a weak business case.
Much of the reason why they are so hard to implement is that the basic ways of working smarter is not well enough understood and first in place.
The Basic Way of working smarter
Managers and leadership
A manager with staff responsibility shall work through his/her subordinates. This means that a manager should be selfless, act as a leader and completely focus on maximizing the productivity of his/her staff.
Too often, experts are promoted to managers with personnel responsibilities as there is status associated with personnel responsibility. The problem is that experts are often very analytical and not very social minded, which is essential for becoming a really good leader.
Another problem is that their shift in role leaves a vacuum behind them in their area of expertise. The rest of the organization keep going to them for answers which leaves them little or no time to manage and coach their new subordinates, which they usually do not feel that comfortable about doing anyway.
Often you hear companies say that they have two career paths. One for experts and the other for traditional managers. I have however never come across a company where they have succeeded with this. That should not stop companies from trying. Every manager who lives up to the leadership role is a success and any expert who can make a career that fits his/her personality is a step in the right direction.
Recommendations for managers:
Deliver through others
Accept that you as a manager work through others and that it is important that you learn to trust others and delegate. This means that you have to accept that some deliveries from you subordinates are not up to your complete satisfaction. Sure, if a delivery is clearly below expectations, you should correct it. But if is only slightly below your expectations you should let it pass since it will build confidence in the person who created it, which then becomes an investment into that person’s future capability.
Situational leadership management (SLM)
Take a course in SLM. Even if you are a social and empathetic person. It is useful to get tips and advice on how to handle leadership against different personality types and situations.
It is otherwise very easy to ruin your relationship or just a situation through ill-considered words or actions.
Mastering situational leadership is even more important for young leaders. With life experience, you tend to learn this. It is worrying how many companies appoint young managers without also ensuring that they master situational leadership.
Don't make the same mistake twice
Being able to make mistakes is important for success. Compare the saying "Who dares wins". The problem is that many people make the same mistakes several times and this despite participating in Lessons learnt and Retrospect sessions.
The reason is that it is not enough to do this at group or team level, you must bring it down to the personal level. Every person should ask themselves every day, what went well and not so well today?
When it comes to things that worked poorly, the fault you often make is that you don't dig deep enough for its root cause.
What you should do is ask yourself the question Why 5 times in a row e.g.
Why was the delivery delayed
Answer – It took longer to develop
Why did it take longer to develop
Answer - We underestimated the complexity
Why did we underestimate the complexity
Answer – We didn’t listen to the experts well enough
etc.
Often these 5 Why lead to something like, "We didn't have enough information to make a decision". More about decision-making in the next section.
When the 5 questions lead to something else, you have to mentally note this and learn to recognize the situation that led up to the error so that you next time may see it in coming and act differently.
Of course, this also works on things that have gone well i.e., what contributed to the success. This is however usually easier to remember.
To make decisions
It is not the few big decisions but the many small decisions that drives success.
Some observations regarding decision-making:
Then, how do you make decisions when you are not 100% certain of its outcome
Minor decisions
Major decisions
Do exactly as with minor decisions steps 1 to 4 above.
Since the decision is major, it probably needs to be anchored higher up in the organization. For that, they need information about the issue and the problem.
Produce a short and concise presentation with:
Through these two methods it is possible to make speedy decisions without 100% certainty.
To prioritize
Being able to prioritize is closely related to making decisions. That is, it is a decision in itself. In principle, the same things apply here. Is it an important prioritization, involve the right people and get their input. If it is a less important, go by the Business Case principle i.e., what gives the best value in relation to effort, that one you do first. An often-used expression is first deal with "Low hanging fruit".
Another very useful rule when it comes to prioritizing is
"It's always better with something simple that works than something complicated that doesn't."
This should go without saying but it isn't and definitely not if prestige comes into play. In any case, my message is not to be afraid to propose solutions that are really simple and robust.
To create involvement
Anyone who runs any form of development or change work must get good contact with everyone affected by the initiative. This applies to both those who are affected positively or negatively and those who just contribute to the initiative.
If it is a major development or change initiative, not everyone in the periphery must be contacted personally but information must reach everyone, and their input must be collected. To do this one may use contact persons who channel the information.
The relationship with all these stakeholders must be on a level where truths, ideas, jokes and fears can be freely exchanged without the risk of criticism or other consequences. If you manage to do this well enough, so that people enjoy working with you and feel appreciated, you will have little problem getting their help. They will simply find ways to work with you.
Achieving this without being sincerely interested in your fellow human beings is hard. Given that most people within the IT industry are mainly analytical and not famous for their social proficiencies this can be a challenge.
The Grand approach to work smarter address this by having formalized meetings. The Basic way of working smarter does this by creating an atmosphere where people really want to work.
The essence of this:
Narcissism
The percentage of people who are narcissists is between 1 and 6% depending on the degree of Narcissism and who you ask. There are slightly more men than women.
The proportion of Narcissists among managers is higher. Some are just annoying while other can be quite destructive. A full-blown Narcissist is referred to as a Psychopath.
Narcissism can be categorized into two main types: grandiose narcissism and vulnerable narcissism. Grandiose narcissism is characterized by a sense of superiority, arrogance, and a belief in one's exceptional abilities. This type of narcissism is often associated with extroverted behavior and a desire for power and dominance. Vulnerable narcissism, on the other hand, is characterized by feelings of insecurity, low self-esteem, and a need for validation from others. This type of narcissism is often associated with introverted behavior and a tendency to be emotionally reactive.
It is very likely that you at some point in your career will be confronted by a Narcissist. If you are unlucky, it is your manager and if you are really unlucky, he/she is the destructive Grandiose type and will make your life miserable. That is, unless you do something about it.
So, how do you know you are dealing with a Narcissistic? Well, if you after a meeting with this person feel that you have been bullied.
If you understand this thing with narcissistic personality disorder, which it is, i.e., a disorder, it will be easier for you to just shake it off. If you don't, it will hurt mentally and you may lose faith in yourself.
A little brief about what Narcissism is. Narcissism means that a person is preoccupied with himself and has difficulty taking in the perspective of others. The person is context-blind and emotionally tone-deaf. ?However, the person is often charming and eloquent, which can allow this person to dupe and manipulate other people. The narcissist often makes a strong first impression and finds it easy to make superficial contacts, but not infrequently finds it difficult to maintain them.
In simple terms. A Narcissist in professional life builds his person and career by charming upwards and kicking down the hierarchy. He/she does this by neither understanding nor caring about the thoughts and feelings of others.
As a way for the Narcissist to highlight his/her own excellence, the Narcissist often takes actions which can be perceived as being action oriented, a doer.
Since decisiveness is a common requirement for managers, Narcissists are overrepresent as such.
Depending on an organization's situation and the need for action, the person who appoints the manager can be charmed by the Narcissist's eloquence and blind towards how he/she treats his/her subordinates.
I strongly hope that appointing managers always take meticulous references.
How to deal with a narcissist?
Additional information regarding typical Narcissistic traits
Confident in their cause
Being overly confident in one's knowledge is another characteristic. Some narcissists may even claim to know things that are not true, probably because knowledge gaps would lower their status. If a narcissist is asked "do you know when the Monticello tract was signed", the person may answer yes, even though there was no Monticello tract.
Hard to admit mistakes
Since the narcissist has difficulty seeing his own faults and shortcomings, the person also has difficulty taking criticism, and can instead get angry, blame, or neglect to listen. A narcissist rarely apologizes, and can continue to claim that they are right, even when proven otherwise.
Seeking attention
The narcissist is in dire need of attention, and it can take many forms. For example, one study shows that people who highlight themselves a lot in social media are also more narcissistic than others. Often the person also attaches great importance to status markers, such as nice titles, their appearance and expensive brands.
Taking liberties
As superior and chosen, the narcissist also considers himself to have greater rights and powers than "ordinary" people. Getting high-level managerial jobs, big bonuses, and using the company's resources for your own gain can be taken for granted by a narcissist. Likewise, exploiting and manipulating other people for their own needs.
Humor
Few things in business are so serious that they can't be joked about.
Work should be fun and laughter stimulates. It does not have to be jokes all the time but showing yourself human contributes greatly to well-being. Dare to show that you are fallible and can make mistakes.
The best way to create a light-hearted culture is if managers set an example by for instance occasionally saying things like “Oups, now I was unlucky in my thinking, or simply admitting “I was wrong”.
Conflicts
Swedes are known to be afraid of conflicts. When other people take a fight, Swedes clenches their fists in their pockets and mutters something foul quietly.
By conflict, I do not mean different opinions on issues of fact. I mean conflicts where emotions begin to influence behavior. The kind where you in your thoughts start connecting invectives to your antagonist. It is guaranteed to lead to poor communication and if you are unlucky, the other person sits on critical information, which infallibly leads to a concrete risk to your work.
How then do you resolve conflicts?
Often conflicts are due to clashes in personality. People simply function differently. This we have touched on before. A classic scenario is between an analytical person who expects detailed information about a problem and has to collaborate with an entrepreneur/generalist. The analytical person is guaranteed to perceive the other person as unprofessional and the entrepreneur/generalist his counterpart as mentally sluggish. With these positions it is not far for hostile emotions to take over.
This must not be the case. If you feel that you end up in a situation like this, no matter what personality you have, you have to deal with it and the sooner the better.?
The first step to resolve this is to objectively determine what personality your opponent has. Next, what pros and cons that personality reasonably possesses. Then consider how this personality can match your own and how you may adjust your own behavior to better match his/hers. For example, by more patiently listen to more details.
This does not mean you are giving in to your opponent. It just means you are smarter at problem solving.
If this does not work, you should confront the other person and simply clear the air by saying something like "I don't think our communication works well and I want it to work well". Assuming that the other person is not a Narcissist i.e., inability sense a bad relationship, your initiative will be appreciated, and you will be seen as a good sincere person.
Appearance
It is bad manners to comment on someone’s appearance. Still, most people notice how you dress and look. This, together with what you say and do leaves an impression with people you meet.
You decide what that impression is going to be. Is it going to be, “Person with bright ideas” or “Funny dressed or hairdo person who said something I don’t remember.”
Dressing inconspicuously according to the occasion is the way to go. Do not forget your shoes. People notices those as well.
Also consider you posture. The way you walk and move mirrors your confidence. With the right posture, gaze and voice you can move mountains. This really ought to be higher up on this list.
Raise your salary
As long as you work in the same company with the same tasks, you cannot expect more than one or two percents annual salary raise. That is just the way it is.
If you change role and responsibility within the same company, you can hope for a few percents increase.
If, on the other hand, you move to another company, then the increases can be substantial. Especially if you can show documentation of how profitable you were at your last job.
A professor I studied for gave the advice that you should stay at a job for as long as you are years old divided by 10. That is, at 30 you should stay 3 years and at 40, 4 years and so on.
This not only optimizes your salary increase but also your skills. Sure, you can learn new things within the same company. But you learn so much more by also changing environment and company culture.???
A prerequisite for finding new employment is that you actually manage to get an offer. That requires you to market yourself. The classic resume is still important but more important is that you are visible. Expect all recruiters to monitor social media closely. It's good if you're seen on social media but remember that it needs good stuff. Think about what you post on Facebook, Twitter etc.
Then you should practice looking for new work, even if you do not really need it. A job interview now and then keeps you updated on which industries and roles are in demand and not least how you behave during the interview itself. A word of caution here. Do not frequent the same recruiter too often. They may think that you are not serious.
Responsibility
Often you hear that "someone needs to take more responsibility for something".?What do we really mean by taking responsibility?
Wikipedia describes the word responsibility as the (legal or moral) obligation to ensure that something (special) comes true and the obligation to be accountable and face certain consequences if this does not happen.
This means that the person responsible does not need to do everything him/herself. It is enough to ensure that it happens. So, delegation is all right.
What about taking the consequences if it does not happen? Will there actually be consequences, and how is the relation between the size and importance of the responsibility and the size of the consequence?
By following my lessons learnt, including this thing with managing expectations, I would say you are well prepared for taking on any professional responsibility.
Really insightful and well written. To me it accentuates two things; you are never too old to learn and you are the sum of your experiences gathered during your career.
Platform Owner - Integration & Automation p? OKQ8
1 年V?ldigt v?lskrivet! S? v?rdefullt med all livserfarenhet nedkokad till flytande guld! :)
Business Operation Manager & Change Lead
1 年Wow vilken bra text!!!
Managing Director AddSecure FleetVisor (Interim) I CEO I Interim I Board Member I Advisor
1 年Took a while to read but very relevant! I think you nailed most things there is!
International Sales | Co-Founder | Leadership & Coaching
1 年Nyttigt, tack ??