Getting your player ready...
Dear J.T. & DALE: After college, I started doing entry-level administrative jobs. After 10 years, I went back for my master’s degree in international business, which I completed in 2012. Despite my new qualifications, I ended up in another assistant’s job. Once again, I feel trapped, underappreciated and demotivated. Admittedly, this has had a negative effect on my punctuality and performance. – Jasmine
JT: I’m glad to hear that you’ve decided to focus on taking your career to the next level. If your current employers do not see your true potential, it’s because you’re asking them to trust you on what you are capable of accomplishing. However, they have no evidence on which to conclude that you could take on a higher level of responsibility. What they see is an individual who has allowed her career to be on autopilot for a decade. You need to change that perception. DALE: It sounds as though you’ve fallen into the old trap of “You’re paying me less than I’m worth, so I’ll give you less than my best.” That strategy merely ensures that you will never be seen as capable of more. You need to study the people at the levels above your own. See what meetings they attend, what publications they read, what professional associations they belong to. Volunteer to participate on projects where you can see them in action and become part of the team. Make yourself visible, then valuable, then indispensable. That’s when you have leverage to move up to the next level. JT: At the same time, you need to prepare yourself for the possibility of moving on to a new employer. Sometimes it’s easier to change jobs than it is to change the perceptions of your current colleagues. You need to meet individuals outside the company who have jobs you wish you could have. There are lots of fabulous social media tools, like LinkedIn, to help you. Once you begin to make new connections and develop relationships, you’ll see opportunities appear that had been hidden. Dear JT & DALE: I work in information technology and make a six-figure income, but I am underemployed. I spend my day fixing phones and printers while longing for more interesting projects. I think I need to move into management to further my career. I’d like to wind up in a CTO (chief technology officer) position.– Brian JT: In this era of constant cost-cutting, I find that anybody making more than $50,000 per year is going to be routinely subjected to a cost/benefit analysis. If you are underemployed, there’s a good chance your employer will figure that out and hire someone less expensive. So this is a perfect time to move your career forward. You have your goal – to become a CTO – and now it’s a matter of plotting out the steps to get there. DALE: The easiest way to start is simply to read job postings for the kind of job you want. Many of these will be quite specific, and they’ll give you what amounts to a list of ideal qualifications. You can begin to work on that list in your current job. Doing so will solve your problem of being bored and underemployed. Go to management with ideas for new technology solutions and you’ll be helping your company and your future. JT: Agreed. Most individuals make the mistake of waiting for their employers to tell them what they should do. But once you understand that your career is a “business of one,” you’ll want to work with your employer to understand expectations and then exceed them. This means investing time and energy into endeavors that will help the company while also helping your career development. Think of it as putting “sweat equity” into your business of one.Management guru Dale Dauten has written six books and is an authority on innovation in the workplace. His latest book, “Great Employees Only: How Gifted Bossess Hire & Dehire Their Way to Success” is available at Dauten.com. copyright 2013 King Features.
