The Insider Guide to Careers
Insider information, secrets and tips about getting hired and building careers. For employees and job candidates.
Look at the big picture:
Today may have been the worst day of your life. You may have gotten laid off from the company you had planned to work with for a long time. At this time, do remember, “When one door closes, many doors open.” There is a long-term and strategic perspective to what happened to you, outlined in the post below. There is a more urgent and transactional need to find a new job, which I will write about in the next post.
As humans, we are all capable of an infinite variety of things in our roles, but it is easy to get straight-jacketed into roles for various reasons. It could be an easy job with little work; maybe your kids were at school, and you get a bit of time to get your life in order; perhaps you were in the job because of the health insurance. Whatever the reason, everybody gets a shot at rewriting your life story from scratch; today is your day.
Ask yourself why you took up the earlier job. Was it the compensation, the benefit, the prestige, or to prove to the world outside that you are better than your peers? An important HR model to consider is Herzberg’s two-factor theory. Herzberg noted that salary, work conditions and your supervisor cannot be motivators in the workplace. At best, they are hygiene factors, the lack of which can cause dissatisfaction, but the presence of which cannot ensure motivation. Motivators are factors like achievement and recognition, which go beyond work and tie to life’s big questions.
Retrospect by asking some questions to yourself honestly and faithfully. Do not delude yourself; you have no greater judge to answer to than yourself.
You may end up with a lot of surprises in this evaluation. You may have the right skills but were in a lousy company. Perhaps you never saw the warning signals, and the axe finally fell on you. Either way, there was a misfit, and it is good that you got out. Now that you answer these questions honestly and faithfully, do the following:
Gap analysis of skills
This analysis will ensure that irrespective of the next job you take up, you are learning the right skills, enabling you to get the dream job you want over time. You may have to continue on the bandwagon you are in, even though you hate it, because it pays you well. Give yourself a maximum of 2–3 years in whichever job you are in, and build a financial cushion. At the same time, learn the skills needed for your dream job. Your target is to apply for those jobs in the next 2–3 years.
Remember, frustration is caused not by doing painful things at work but by doing things which take you away from your destination. Every step you take towards building your dreams is your way of reclaiming your life.
“Every journey, however grand or visionary they may have been, began with a single step.”
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