The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : How to boost your career

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Jul 24, 2006

Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

How to boost your career

Special Correspondent

Right thinking and decision-making matter a lot

Bangalore: Life isn't a dress rehearsal, someone said. You have this one lifetime of which the first half or so is almost spent on achieving your goals.

Corporate coaches now talk about "customising your career" from day one until you have reached an executive position or if you are more ambitious. Every new recruit in a large organisation is made to go through weeks of training and career mapping with the help of select mentors who have spent enough years, perfecting the job skills of newcomers.

Success does not come out of that diploma from the best B-school or an IIT or even with a masters from overseas. Life has its own experiences to learn from, seniors will point out. Some of them had fewer academic qualifications but made it to the top. "I learnt on the job and acquired skills that I improved upon,'' is likely to be a common refrain.

Right thinking and decision-making, willingness to get rid of past baggage and choosing the right kind of people to associate with, matter in building one's career.

Neither success nor failure should be discounted if proper lessons are to be learnt from such experiences, veteran human resources managers tell us. If you are not happy with the current situation, do something about it but do not run away from it unless it is for another career with better prospects.

The kind of people you associate with at work and outside, matters. If you associate mostly with negative people, you too may become feeling that way. If you spend more time with positive people, you are most likely to become confident and successful too. Try to make some time to spend with people you admire in the organisation. Perhaps people who have overcome initial disadvantages to make it to the top. Ask them to be your mentors. Look at what they have done to get over difficulties, to solve problems and how they behave with others. You do not need to entirely copy them but you can include their best into your own functioning style. Learn from your mistakes and then move on. Do take more risks if your work demands it, but be prepared to accept that you made the decision, if things go wrong. If you have character flaws , accept them and get help to correct them and once having started afresh, never go back to past behaviour patterns.

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