Monday, 13 May 2013

9 Career Tips for your first job.

There is plenty of career advice that is being thrown around, especially if you are just clearing college, or are about to start your first job. Not all will be applicable to you, but we believe that a few of them might be insightful to you, and even worthy to be incorporated into your own career journey. Here are the nine career tips, as adapted from the Business Insider Magazine.

1. Find your passion.
"Never give up searching for the job that you’re passionate about". "Try to find the job you’d have if you were independently rich. ... Forget about the pay. When you’re associating with the people that you love, doing what you love, it doesn’t get any better than that.”

2. Be careful who you look up to.
"If you tell me who your heroes are, I'll tell you how you're gonna turn out. It's really important in life to have the right heroes. I've been very lucky in that I've probably had a dozen or so major heroes. And none of
them have ever let me down. You want to hang around with people that are better than you are. You will move in the direction of the crowd that you associate with."

3. Learn how to communicate effectively.
No matter how talented you are, you will have to communicate your ideas across effectively if you hope to move up the corporate ladder. The good thing is that even for those that are not good in written or oral communication, it can still be learnt. 

4. Develop healthy habits by studying people.
"Pick the person that has the right habits, that is cheerful, generous, gives other people credit for what they do. Look at all of the qualities that you admire in other people ... and say to yourself, 'Which of those qualities can't I have myself?' Because you determine whether you have them. And the truth is you can have all of them."

5. Learn how to say "no."
"You won't keep control of your time; unless you can say 'no.' You can't let other people set your agenda in life."

6. Don't work for someone who won't pay you fairly.
"I do very little negotiation with people. And they do little with me, in terms of it ... if I was a woman and I thought I was getting paid considerably less than somebody else that was equal coming in, that would bother me a lot. I probably wouldn't even want to work there.  I mean, [if] somebody's gonna be unfair with you, in salary, they're probably being unfair with you in a hundred other ways."

7. Become involved with growing businesses.
Though this might prove controversial for some, being in a growing business gives you tremendous learning opportunities, as you grow together. However, in the same vein, the management must be clear on how promotions are handled, and how responsibilities are shared. The deal clincher would be if the company offers bonuses. Sure, many companies do not provide bonuses or any employee share ownership schemes, arguing that the salary is enough, but if you look deep down, you might find one or two employers that offers all these things."

8. Learn everything you can about your industry.
Growing your intellectual prospective will help you critically solve future problems that may arise.
As famed investor Warren Buffet says, "I knew a lot about what I did when I was 20. I had read a lot, and I aspired to learn everything I could about the subject. "

9. Young women should seek male mentors.
This is an advice from Warren Buffet again, which I think is debatable if it were to be applied here in Kenya. He says that it's important for women to have male mentors, because the majority of today's leaders in the workplace are still men.

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