ESSENTIAL STEPS OF CAREER DEVELOPMENT: EGO ENTERPRISES
You do
You make a profit, appropriately defined.
Into which established career do your interests fit, if any?
Into which related careers do your interests fit? (Everyone answers this question even if you had an answer to the first question; you can never have too many choices).
If your interests fit an established career, what are the prospects for employment - near, medium and long term?
What are the employment prospects for related fields? (If your interests do not appear to fit directly, you are looking for a field as close to your interest as possible).
Prospects for employment are NOT trend lines of past employment. They are projections of the economic prospects of the industry or sector of which the career is a part. You do economic analysis or get access to it.
If your interests do not easily fit even related fields well, evaluate the prospects for direct sales into the marketplace.
Having identified the most appropriate career or marketplace, identify the key, most attractive employers.
Market research is a continuing process because both your interests and the marketplace change.
You conduct market research in career services, libraries, databases, on the job and in the classroom. You talk to peers, colleagues, managers, professors. You talk a lot. You read a lot.
Plan A
A detailed plan to achieve employment with your employer of first choice.
A detailed plan to turn this position into your ideal view of work.
Plan B
Once hired, the continuing identification of a number of alternative employment
positions (at least 3) which would offer reasonable satisfaction and conditions.
A detailed plan to achieve employment with the first choice on the B list.
Is Plan B always up to date and detailed?
Plan C
A plan to use your interests to create a large scale venture/innovation
to be implemented in your employer's organization.
Plan D
A feasible and quite detailed plan to start a venture in your areas of
interest.
All 4 plans require both marketing, investment and entrepreneurial approaches.
And money means not just on tuition. It is money for books, magazines, communication services, office set-up (you're going to run a serious business - your life - out of your back pocket?), travel, trade shows, to name a few.
First, you invest in your personal capabilities, your general ability to do certain tasks. But that is not enough for tomorrow's marketplace. That just makes you a well-trained employee, like many others.
The goal is to be unlike others, to be premium priced, to have distinctive function. And there is only one way to do that.
Therefore, you invest in personal research and development to create new ideas, new innovations, new procedures and new directions. Your ideas make you distinctive. They can make you unique. For efficiency, you use term papers to develop your career-related ideas. And use the term paper in search and interview process. (A graduate student without career-related research is inviting limited success or outright failure.)
As a student, you also do speculative work which may never earn you academic credit. You never let your professors have full control of your mind's agenda.
As an employee, you also do speculative work which may never be recognized. You never let your employer have full control of your mind's agenda. Control of the agenda is control.
To generate your unique perspective on important issues is not as difficult as it sounds. Part of your R&D investment will be in your personal collection of books, articles, databases, reports, papers, hand-outs. Since your personal library is a unique collection, shouldn't the ideas which arise from it also be distinctive? (If you do not use a physical and electronic library, if you "keep everything in your head", you do not know enough).
You develop your network aggressively. See: NETWORKING
You create a resume of distinctive accomplishment. You do not describe routine duties, letting the job title speak for itself. Rather you describe what exceptional work you did under that job title. That requires that whatever tasks your employer assigns you, you do more.
Your cover letter makes explicit reference to one of your independent ideas.
When employed, you distribute your ideas as broadly as possible, in as many forms as possible, memo, newsletter, newspaper, trade publication, conversation. You do not just write a memo to the boss, hoping he/she likes it.