|
|
|
How To Get Ahead in Today’s Business Environment
|
Business New Haven
11/11/2002
By: Nancy Barnes
|
That the best-selling tale of an upwardly mobile executive in the 1956 novel, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, was set in Connecticut still speaks volumes about the ambitions of businesspersons in the Nutmeg State. Yet, the personal cost of getting ahead need not be high, nor the means of getting there complex. A little self-knowledge and the capacity to generate relationships can be extraordinarily powerful tools.
Businesspersons need to generate relationships with mentors and role models who can provide them with guidance on the positions where they might be most effective in their careers. For career businesspersons, finding such persons often starts at the college level. In addition to professors, alumni can be tapped for informational interviews. Relationships with both professors and fellow graduates can be cultivated over the years. Remember that a businessperson may have all the skills and abilities he or she needs to perform a job well, yet need someone else to open just one crucial door.
Surprisingly, many persons who are quite serious about getting ahead lack a focused idea of what they want or a solid idea of the areas in which they excel. In the current business climate, companies are not hiring people and then guiding them in their careers. Rather, the individual is responsible for his or her own career, including strategizing about the next move he or she needs to make to get ahead.
For those who lack such self-analytical skills, most colleges give their alumni access to on-campus career centers. There, they can take tests that inventory their skills and point out their strengths. A person who takes such a battery of tests might find he or she is best suited for a position with a high degree of people-contact, for instance. There are also private consultants to who can help a person do this. Even books, such as the well-known, "What Color Is Your Parachute?" can be helpful as a first step.
Flexibility is also quite important now. Employees need to be willing to retool if their skills are no longer needed in the workplace. And they must constantly monitor the work environment to see what skills the workplace is willing to pay for. Companies will offer employability-that is to say, if a person has the right skills, a company will employ him-if an employee has the right skills. But no company will offer even an implicit guarantee of long term employment today.
It is also important to make enhancement rather than advancement a top priority. In today's workplace, a person must ask, first, am I in a place that really fits what I want to accomplish, and, second, am I in a place that fits me as a person? In a sluggish economy, the individual must make judgment calls as to whether leaving his present position presents a viable alternative to staying in a position that may not seem the best fit. Perhaps it's best for him to hold on to his current position and take classes to increase career opportunities. Making enhancement a priority need not be risky strategy.
Way down on the list for making a success in a business career is dress, because it is far less important than the abilities a person has. A businessperson does need to make a good impression, and he should match his environment. Of course, a businessperson must dress more formally if he is fitting into the environment of a New York City bank rather than the campus of a computer company. And dressing becomes less casual the more client interaction a businessman has. In addition, the less power a businessperson has, the more attention he or she should pay to dress.
Although businesspersons limit the trajectory of their careers as they progess in them because of the choices they have made, that does not mean all is lost when it comes to getting ahead.
Networking, for instance, is not age-related, and it never ends. A businessperson always has opportunities to meet people who can be helpful to him as supporters.
Also, the wider his relationships the better his network is. Research has shown, for instance, that should a businessperson need to retool or change his career, the more persons he has to rely on as suppliers of information the better he will be.
|
Go FirstGo PreviousGo
NextGo LastGo
to Index
|
|
