Choosing career paths - many possibilities

There is no one direction when it comes to choosing career paths, in many of todays economies there are countless of opportunities even when you divide them by the number of people looking for one.  take risks, do not fold, stay positive, create a daily routine when it comes to doing your job right and be prepared for changes.

In this story I will focus on things to  watch out for when you are choosing your career. I will stress on why it is important to break stereotypes and my personal example.

Set up professional or financial goals based on what you want to accomplish in long term. Having those written down, will be the driving force for you on a higher note. It will give you the feeling that you do not work for someone else, but for achieving your own personal goals. This will give you the extra skill everyone is looking for - being determined and dedicated at work.

Once you jump in a new role, get obsessed with it. Once you get the job, start reading about it, learn from colleagues, stalk your competitors, be the first one at the meetings and the last to get their lunch break. Lead your own diary of things that need to be accomplished on daily and weekly basis and those on one year basis and write down the needed steps and people you need to collaborate with to get things done. Whoever there is something you do not know, ask in advance. Spent at least few minutes on the night before every important work day and on weekends or holiday days , start contacting your colleagues and prepare your email for the first day of work - whether it is Monday or first day after short holiday. It will help you boost your productivity and you won’t spent the whole morning on Monday waking up and reacting to other peoples emails and calls. Be prepared and strive to be the most informed in the room. Another thing to get you a little bit more closer to being you best self, is to dress accordingly but also have your own style. Combining those two will make work fun for you but also st the tone for others to take work seriously. Life is serious, your goals are important, the money you receive, must be earned, not given. So you better not be the lazy one.

Befriend your colleagues. We meet our colleagues more than your friends and family, we spent time with them and share almost the same interest - the mission of the company we are working for. The chance that there are people smarter than you or people that are even your managers, inviting them over for a cocktail or getting lunch together, will make a positive impression. It will also help your team productivity at work, tackling those tensions and stressful challenging projects you need to accomplish by being friends at work. I promise you some of those people will stay your friends forever.

Whenever there is conflict or something that bothers you, reach out immediately to Human Resources. Learned behaviours from outside of work life are definitely who we mostly are doing our job as well. If you are used to hiding your worries, your stress, the conflict or bully behaviour from someone else towards you, whenever there is something that bother you between you and your colleague, or someone sleaze sabotaged your work or you just feel overwhelmed or not treated fairly, talk with Human Resources, they face every kind of situations on daily bases and are the doctors you need whenever you have a problem. Sometimes there advice or decision may not be in your favour short term but definitely will help you getting out of a difficult situation at work. Human resource managers or if you do not have one, talk to a manager with much more experience than you, you will get guided with a decision you lack the knowledge about - whatever it is at the work place that bothers you.

Don't get trapped, just do your work, go home and have fun with your friends and family as much as you can. Getting obsessed in doing your job is a must, but don’t get trapped into brining this obsessions to your every friend catch up or brunch meeting as it can turn into a chronic tiredness. Your brain needs the needed recharge, otherwise burning out quickly is awaiting you for sure. You need to learn how to bring balance by doing some things others. Doing your hobbies, meeting friends and chatting with family members is super important to sustain yourself in long run. Also be strict yo how much you are willing to invest from your personal time to your work and never make compromise with it. You are the most important person in your life and you own good health and personal prosperity to you and the ones that love you.

Every failure teaches you a lot. I have done few mistakes in my early career that helped me shape my view to when it comes working for a company, whether it is in the corporate world or a small start up. What have drove to those mistake, was the lack of learned skills on how to manage my emotions at work. It was never a matter of whether I have done my job the right way. You can exceed in what you do, but you also need to learn how to communicate or navigate interpersonal situations so that you are not on the losing site. As everywhere, in companies too there is competition and there will be people who you will never make friends outside of the workplace, but you do need to learn to communicate with everyone and be prepared for when the tests come your way. Being emotional in those situations, will lead you from one unpleasant situation to a bigger one. I have done such choices and I consider them as a mistake. While you should never judge yourself but only analyse the situation as someone from outside and just make the resolutions for next time. It will teach you on your own behaviour and character, it will teach you what to do next time you come around and it will definitely enlarge your view. Work life is stressful not just for us, but for others we meet at work as well. While you should never bring your personal problems at work, it is important to stay focused and even be there for others. Another examples of failures can be not being able to fit it, adapt in a new role, or succeed in what is the company expectations. Those can be painful ones, but it definitely are the downs that motivate us even more. How you should navigate after such failures, is again analyse what you lacked and get the needed tools to learn and become better.

Be a continues learner and explore opportunities inside the company to do extra courses and studying programs. Acquiring new skills will always help you become better and set you apart from the ones that do not have the needed skills. It will also give you an extra push in your future prospective inside the company to with your next endeavour. Learn as much as you can and look at every day as learning something new. Having this mindset will help you overcome stress at work, see challenging situations as learning opportunity and you will be forever young.

Practice soft skills - emotional intelligence. I have mentioned the importance of befriending your colleagues, because a team work can solce all problems. Having the needed emotional intelligence is hard even for the most advanced men in their careers. Interpersonal relations are heave to manage, but you need to do the homework of learning and building slowly but surely the soft skills you need. Those are equally important to the technical skills you need to accomplish a target or a project and it does not matter whether you work remotely from home or are in the office or spend your days spread between different locations. You need to know how to react, how to communicate and how to take the position in a way that does not affects your productivity. There are some books and webinars , also emotional intelligence is part of every study program connected to management. But I do encourage you yo spent extra time, to learn and read on what is to be emotionally ready to do a job.

I've made my way in marketing, product management and sales world. I would not exchange it for anything because I feel prepared working for any company in the world in any field. I feel flexible to change the way of my studies in bioscience and work for a social media company negotiating strategic partners relations, or selling real estate, or developing a strategy launching the newest smart robot for your future smart home. My career in marketing and sales gave me the needed push and freedom to be able to shift between different fields. For someone as you and me with so many different interest that todays world is giving us, it is important to have skills that can be translated in different work environments.

To be good in sales and marketing, you need to firmly have good communication skills, once you develop that and have perfect knowledge about the product you develop, you are unbreakable. Few things may still market share from your market, but the more deeper your go into communication and sustaining meaningful connections, you can sell anything. It teaches you about human behaviour, human divvies in taking a decision, it make you great friendships and it give you the confidence. I have also learned to focus where there is greater potential, to be brave and not afraid to try, to start a conversation or encounter someone who is one step in front of me professionally. As every product offering is coming with challenges so is every single sales until you become settled into a persons life or account, you learn to not give up and start being more and more creative in finding ways to show the value of what you bring to the table. Slowly you learn how to promote, what to promote and why you promote it. You become extremely competitive and this strive transfers to your life overall. As sales and making career is always connected to achieving targets, you simply start setting those at every sphere of your life. You learn what motivates you but also other people and at some point you find yourself with the needed skill enough to be able to manage a larger team in any sphere. The flexibility and creativity sales and marketing give ones is as valuable, as learning your product unique features. Career in sales has given me the know how in most situations in my life.

There is no one direction when it comes to careers. Take risks at the beginning of your professional path, take bigger stakes and do not fold when faced with obstacles. Stay positive - probably the most important thing yo career success whether you are working for someone or having business of your own. Create a daily routine when it comes to doing your job right, be prepared for changes.