You plan your career

I recently hosted a group of young graduates for lunch. They just joined the company I work for a couple of months ago and the lunch is part of the on boarding process at my company. The lunch provided an opportunity for interaction between the young graduates and departmental managers to share experience and seek clarification on company's philosophy and anything related to career progression.

One of the questions posted to me by one of the young graduates was: "Does the company I currently working for worth the time to be in until retirement?" My response was of course not a straight forward yes or no. Let me share it here.

First and foremost, employment loyalty should be for oneself. I know it sounds selfish, the reality is at this time and era, company strives for sustainable profitability and will not be hesitant to restructure and reengineer its business and operations including making its own staff redundant. Employees at the same time shall strive for sustainable employment either by working for someone or by working for him or herself in a business venture. Sustainable employment means that the employees shall always develop themselves to be able to be assessed as an asset for current or future employer. Developing oneself will also provide a platform for self work or business.

Secondly, establish a goal in your career, what will be the highest position you want to hold if you are working for a company? Then plan many paths toward this position by knowing what will be the next and subsequent positions that you need to perform before eventually landing at the highest position. Set sensible timeline, normally 3-4 years at one position and always plan for a promotion when moving into a new position.

Thirdly, executing this plan shall also include competence gap identification and learning initiatives. Identification of competence gap can be done individually and by others. Be humble to seek and receive views from others. Learning initiatives can be formal and informal. Formal learning may be in the form of classroom training and coaching while informal learning may be in the form of projects involvement. Make sure the learning can cover for an alternative plan if the desired highest position is not attainable. Initiate the learning yourself instead of waiting others to initiate it for you.

Thirdly, harness soft skills such as communication, interpersonal, problem solving as a start and gradually moving to influencing and leadership skills. These skills are important to apply while working.

Lastly, always review the plan. Make some adjustments along the way in order to reach to the goal. Take calculated risk and know when to bail out.

Roughly we can say that the success factor of this plan is made up of 50% from within oneself, 30% within one's influence and 20% based on luck. If the employee is able to develop him or herself, half of the journey is reachable. The next one third is via influencing one's way for a career path by demonstrating one's capability and capacity to move over to higher positions. The last one fifth is luck and luck comes from God. So be nearest to God as you could so that divine interventions always exist in one's career path.