Career Building Skills For Success

You need certain skills for achieving success in a business or career. Based on surveys done on successful businessmen and executives, there are few learnable skills required to increase career advancement and performance.

Some of the important career building abilities and skills are:

Skill to sell: You should have good selling skills, so that you are able to convince customers to buy your products and services. If you are working somewhere then making sales for your company will also require good selling skills. There is no business that can be successful without sales. This also requires negotiation skills.

Skill to write well: There are many people who would be interested in knowing what you know - so why not write it down so that they can read it? Whatever you write should be precise, to the point and clear, so that anyone can understand it.

It is essential to provide written material that is not only convincing and believable, but motivational and constructive as well. It should act as a source of communication for people who want to know more about a particular topic.

Skill to speak: It is essential to know how to speak for yourself and your company when in a meeting. If you are able to speak in a persuasive and clear manner, then you can easily get approval for a budget or grab a new project.

Good speaking skills will also help you in organizing a meeting effectively, or even interviewing someone. Speaking skills can be learned from courses and books, but a lot of determination is required.

Leadership: This is a very important skill that can help you inspire people to do what you want them to do. If you are a team leader in an organization, then leadership skills will matter a lot.
Skill to judge people: This is also one of the most important abilities that could help you build a good career. If you are able to evaluate accurately and outline the possible options at work, it will help you choose the best available. When the choices are related to people then this skill works wonders.

 By Tony Jacowski

Building Your Portfolio for Career Success

Whether you want to apply for promotion, look for another opportunity in your present company, move on and get another job, get into another industry sector, you need to be sure what it is you have to offer. This is what I call your Portfolio. It's a bit like an artist who puts all their best works in a folder so they can show prospective clients. You need to do the same so you can show your prospective new boss.

What should you put in your portfolio?

Your portfolio highlights all the best things about you and your experience to date

It should include:

    your personal qualities eg reliability, innovative, conscientious
    your skills eg good communicator, excellent typist, can build high-level relationships, can resolve complex problems
    your key experiences - these will be from your present job and from past jobs of course but should also include relevant experience from outside work (like home and voluntary work)

How can you build your portfolio?

You need to write it all down. This may sound simplistic but it's amazing how many people forget or most likely don't recognise how skilful they are and what a lot they have to offer.

1 Go through all your present and past successes and ask yourself what does that say about you as a person and as an employee.

For example, if you worked in a customer service role it is likely that you have had to deal with difficult, maybe aggressive people whilst trying to help and maintain the reputation of your organisation. What does this say about you?

    Qualities - patience, respect, persistence
    Skills - communication techniques to diffuse aggression, customer service
    Experience - successful handling of difficult people (on the telephone or face-to-face or both)

2 Show your lists to a trusted friend or colleague; someone who has known you for a while and who wants the best for you would be a good choice. Ask them to make three lists like you've done.

3 Compare the lists you made with your friend's.

After 50 and Changing Careers - Build a Career Plan For Success

If you are over 50 and plan on changing careers, you're sure to hear the following from family, friends and co-workers.

"No one hires an unknown quantity especially if you're over 50". "You can't compete with the younger worker; you'll never catch up with the latest technology". "There is a bias against older workers better to stick with what you've been doing at least you'll have a chance in getting hired".

And so it goes, yet every day those over 50 are being hired, many in new careers. Let's take a look and see what the successful job changer after 50 is doing and help you find that new career after 50.

First, don't be in a hurry. Explore and research where you are going and how you are going to get there. Sometimes, the career you want requires several steps and acquiring several levels of experience.

There are ways to speed up the process; on-line learning and self-study can take the place of formal education. Prior work experience can easily qualify you for critical parts of the new career; supervising employees, budgeting, team leadership, project management are just a few of the transferable skills that will qualify you for the new career.

Second, prepare for interview questions that will probably not be asked; for example, Your supervisor will be considerably younger that you how will you handle it? Or, We require periods where we work long hours and weekends can you handle it at your age? Or, How is your health, we don't want you running up our medical plan costs? Or, Why do you want to start at the bottom? Or, Will you leave us when a job opens in your old career? Or, As old as you are can you really learn new things or are you stuck in the past?

In planning for the job interview, weave into your stories of your accomplishments examples that answer many of the above questions. What new technology did you recently learn? How physically active are you? Successfully working for someone younger? You get the idea.

Yes, you'll still have employer's telling you that you are over qualified for the position, or they found someone who has more "direct job related" experience. Don't get discouraged; remember each "no" gets you one step closer to a "yes."

Third, here are some brief tips to get you started on the journey to find the new career after 50 and job where you enjoy going to work every morning.

Network: use friends, former co-workers and family to put out the widest job search as possible. Use Linkedin.com to find others working in the desired career, and contact them for a short 10-15 minute informational interview.

The informational interviews will provide you will clues as to how you can get added education and experience and where the jobs are.


By John Groth