Business and Life

You want to start the journey off on the right foot by picking the right job. Jack Welch says hire slowly and fire quickly, well, you should decide on a job slowly but leave quickly if the situation mandates it. How do you pick the right job? There are several factors you should consider but number one would be for you to ask yourself this question, “What is my passion”? This could be a whole separate article but if you at least consider what you are passionate about, you have such a higher chance of being successful. One great perk about certain jobs is that you can find jobs that pay you to get trained. Maybe you are not starting out with the perfect job but the job you take teaches you skills that will get you closer to your passion or your perfect job. If you are having trouble with this concept, work backwards. If money was not a concern but you would get bored with retiring to do nothing, what would you ideally do to make money? Take that ideal position and work backwards to determine what skills a person doing that would need and evaluate available jobs in that manner.

Step number two, after you decide on the perfect job aligned with what is available and your passion, is writing the resume. One of the most important things to consider about your resume is who is going to read it. Just like how marketing is not created for the person marketing as it is created for the targeted audience, so should your resume be written. I recently placed an ad for an assistant and got 450 applications in the first week! The resumes that had poor layouts were the first ones to go as I had so many to choose from. Your resume should not describe every single thing you’ve ever done in your life however should convey the things that are important to the job you are going for and I highly recommend bullet points throughout your resume as they catch the eye and are easy to read. You also want to include some sort of additional information that may separate yourself from the competition. Charity work, community awards, sports awards, etc that may make you a more interesting candidate are great things to have on a resume. Keep in mind, this resume is your full representation of the way you do your work. Do not send in a resume until you and perhaps two of your friends have proofed it for any punctuation, grammar and spelling errors.

You get the call from the targeted company, they want an interview, congratulations right? Wrong! You are only halfway there, now its time to shine! The main component to have in an interview is confidence. Know that even if they are talking about things over your head, anyone can learn anything. What one person can do, another can learn. When you arrive be sure to be friendly to every single person you come into contact with, this should be your philosophy anyway in any other situation but make sure you follow this before, during and after the interview. Even if you are intimidated during the interview, realize that you can have any job that you truly want so you want to ask questions! Things to ask about include career paths, training, and the long term plans of the company. Hopefully, you will sound halfway intelligent in the interview as you had better Google the company and read as much on the company as you can. If this is a publicly traded company you should study the financials and the latest press releases. Some of you may think that if you are going for a “low on the totem pole” position that this step is not necessary, and that is exactly why it is, because your competing applicants will probably not care enough to do this. And the final step of any interview, whether you want the job or not, is to send the interviewer(s) a hand written thank you card the next day. Former President Ronald Reagan attributed much of his success to hand written notes, you should follow that example.

Let’s focus now on sprinting up the corporate ladder. You have the job you want but you want to make more money, get a fancier title by rising up the ranks. If you retire to the idea that it’s just hard work and time that gets you the upper positions, I can tell you that in most cases, it is just not true. Wherever you work, once you determine the position you really want to achieve, dress the part! If you are in the mail room but want to be the CEO, dress like the CEO dresses. It is amazing the small things that may draw ridicule from the weaker employees of the company that gets noticed from those in the executive offices. One critical, critical error that a lot of new employees make is in an effort to make ANY friends; they befriend the person or persons that are the complainers of the company. We all know them, the ones that complain about the boss, the pay, the job, the market, the carpet and anything else they can find a reason to complain about. Zig Ziglar said: “People find fault like there’s a reward for it”. Do not associate with these people or you will be the one that is there 30 years later complaining to the young kid taking your job. When you are working for a company, always think of how you can create value. This is especially noted when the market is down. Can you help to cut costs, reduce man hours, or do you have a better way to do something? Well then you want to let your boss or bosses know. To get some ideas on this and other management ideas, read the book title “Straight from the gut” by Jack Welch. If there comes a time when you are going for an inside position, you may consider writing an action plan for that position as what you would do for the company were you in that position over the next 1-5 years. I have used this strategy successfully and what I did was I created a nicely bound 5 year action plan for the position and then delivered it to every member of the hiring committee the morning of the interview. I was competing against more experienced and better qualified people and I’d like to think a big part of it was that I took the time to write that action plan.

I hope you find one or more of these tips useful in your corporate career. After rising the ranks at several companies I found that I was an entrepreneur at heart and decided to work for myself since 2004. A great book that may help you decide if you are in the same boat is by Robert Kiyosaki and is titled “Rich Dad, Poor Dad”.

Ray Higdon is the founder of the Forever Wealth Club (www.ForeverWealthClub.com) is an active real estate investor and entrepreneur that specializes in multiple streams of income. Ray can be reached at rayhigdon@rayhigdon.com

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com - How to Exceed in Corporate America in Any Market