Top 5 Scary Things About Career Development
So it's Friday 13--today is the perfect day to share what "scares" me about career development. Let's jump right in!
Top 5 Scary Things About Career Development
#5. Career Advice Columns
Have you noticed that there's an advice column for every aspect of your career? Have you also noticed that these articles are written by people who write for a living and don't manage careers? That scares me. They're not HR people, psychologists, or even people who have "done it." How do these people know if my skills are transferable? How do they know that I can find a mentor easily? And what's more, why are they experts? (one could say the same thing about me...but I'm no expert and I don't write about what you should do with your career) All I say is, BEWARE the self-professed experts.
#4. Career Coaches
These people scare me because half of them are quacks. They're phenomenal public speakers, but their content is so questionable, they should be giving presentations in The Riddler's costume. Now I've sat through NUMEROUS career coaching sessions and I will not call out the Planter's Nuts here, but be very careful of who you or your firm hires as a career coach. The safe bets are those affiliated with Insights, EQ, and Personal Branding.
#3. Job websites
Can you count the number of job websites there are out there? CareerBuilder, Monster, HotJobs, Jobster, Vault--it's an alphabet soup of sites who post jobs. The Alexa Employment Directory contains over 1,300 job sites! Madness. And what do they really do? They hire all of the #4s and 5s to provide content to help you with your career! Their technologies are arcane in this day and age, and not one of them actually helps you get a job! Now that's scaaaary.
#2. Your boss
This person, whoever he or she is, temporarily holds the keys to your economic viability. Very often they're morons, or possess slightly higher intelligence than Dwight Schrute. What do they do well? They know how to make themselves look good to those who can promote them. They're politically savvy and hold on to the adage that mediocrity rises to the top. The bosses that don't scare me are those who are actually confident about themselves who want to find ways to promote you because they recognize talent. They seek it out, develop it, and let it soar because they genuinely want you to succeed, and they know it will benefit them in the long run. In my experience, that's about 5% of the managers out there....
And the #1 thing that scares me about career development...
1. You
That's right, you scare me. Not because you're all that intimidating, but because you're often the only person who can stop you from achieving all of your career dreams. Sure #2 might have a hand in holding you down for a while, but you are the only one who can allow yourself to be stopped. We live in a world of endless opportunity. Don't allow someone else to hold you back. You're great. Be great. If you don't, eventually you'll realize that you're the common denominator in every career experience you've had. See why that's scary?