We reached out to our contact base to ask a few questions around advice they’d received over the years about interviews and careers – and also what they’d recommend to others starting out today. The results were quite interesting!
This week, we’ve picked out a few comments from the results about the career advice they wish they’d have taken. Could this apply to you too?
What advice do you wish you’d taken early on in your career?
“Keep an eye open for other opportunities. You never know what else may be around.”
Many people stay in jobs they don’t particularly love for too long, for fear of the unknown. Working with an experienced recruiter, you get to see what is out there, find out a lot more about a potential employer compared to reading a job ad and get to figure out your market value. There’s a world of possibility out there, especially in a buoyant tech industry.
“Don’t have office affairs.”
Well, they wrote it. We published it.
“You should be a lawyer.”
The grass always looks greener on the other side, maybe for the next poll we can ask some lawyers what advice they wished they’d taken…
“Get an MBA”
Nowadays, the barriers to entry in getting an MBA are lower than ever. Even if you don’t get the formal qualification, there’s tonnes of resources online and courses you can do with prestigious US and UK universities for free that get you some of the way there. Have a look at what Stanford are offering: http://online.stanford.edu/courses
“Think more about where you want to be in the next 5, 10, 15 years and then start to plan a path to get there. What experience & qualifications do you need in order to get there?”
When you are in a job you like or find comfortable, it’s easy to get complacent. Likewise, if you are regularly promoted, you may be going down a career path set by your employer rather than yourself. Looking critically at where you want to be in the short term, medium term and long term means you can plan out the changes you need to make now to get there in the future. Do you need to go back to studying and get some industry qualifications? Do you need to get more experience in the marketing department at your current company? There’s often lots we can do in our current roles to dramatically improve the chances of getting our next role.
“Don’t follow the money.”
What makes you accept one job over another? Does it always come down to money at the end of the day? Organisations today are recognising that staff want much more than just a job and a pay packet – that’s why there’s such focus on health and wellbeing at work, with many companies offering gym packages, flexi-time and everything in between to lure in the right employees. Where would you be working today if you hadn’t ‘followed the money’?
Keep an eye out for our follow up articles about career advice, interview tips and your advice to younger job seekers in the market today! Read more here: https://yourprimerecruitment.com/blog/