Career is not a sand castle!

Wednesday, 4 May 2016 13:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

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Welcome, everyone, to life after school! We took a break of few years and thanks to Daily FT we’re back. We discussed quite a bit on life after school for school leavers. But we figured life after school tips are equally important for youth, I mean those who are less than 30 years of age. In my years of lecturing, training and coaching I would have come across over 5,000 young people who are yet to start work, in their first or second job. I have seen some making some solid choices in their early years and go far in their careers. At the same time, I have witnessed some of them making poor choices, and their careers never take off. Early years are critical to build a solid career.

This is the time you build a foundation for your career; if the foundation is weak, your career will simply collapse. I like to discuss some of the important elements of this foundation over the next few weeks. I’m sure whatever career path you have chosen, these will help you get a head start. Just last week I had the chance of speaking to a group of undergraduates on employability. I told them that corporates dislike people who study things but like people who learn things. Just think about this. Many of us, for 14 years of school life, we have been told to study and sit for exams! Those who excel at this ‘memory dumps’ get good marks. Is this real learning, does it lead to exploration of new ideas or lead to problem solving? I guess not. I’m yet to see a company giving a good salary increase or a promotion because you could study well and pass an exam! The business world is different; we need to break a BAD habit that is deep rooted for fourteen years. One option is to complain about the system and play victim, that’s an easy way. But consider another option;

take control of your career and start some new habits. But I must tell you, again with my experience with young starters, many opt for an easy option. It’s amazing that the majority wants to do the least and scrape through. That’s nature, there are only a few seats at the top and those who work differently get there. Between 20-30 years, the ‘foundation ten years’ I see in two phases or stages. The first five years is the real start of your career coupled with your first degree or bachelor’s level learning. The second five years is about acceleration and possibly masters level learning. If these golden 10 years is wasted, the chances are that you may be left behind your career or find it tough to build.

I guess most of you know that, almost 20% of today’s jobs didn’t exist a decade ago. So making the right steps in building a career can be challenging. During these ten years you need to ‘develop’ yourself. Developing means not collecting diverse qualifications to confuse potential employers! Development goes beyond the letters of a qualification or years of repetitive work. Of course in the next few weeks we will talk about an emerging segment of young adults, they are called ‘collectors’. They collect qualifications and eventually become unemployable! Join us next time to discuss about the first five years. If you have any queries or comments please write to dusty@lifeafterschool. lk and we will try to answer them. You could also follow us on FB (life after school) and share your views with us. Cheers and see you in two weeks!