An optimist often looks at failures and calls them lessons learned. Whether it is life or career, it is up to you to learn from your mistakes and change them into career lessons.
These lessons that you learn during your job experience should be implemented and help in building your career in the future.
A career is like a long marathon, and we are helping you with career building tips that will help you prepare for it –
1. Accept responsibility for failure
One of the best career lessons you can gain is accepting responsibility for your failures. Even if you are the best performer, you will come across situations where you have dealt with a situation poorly.
Whether you messed up a project deadline or spoilt a good relationship with a client, every career comes up with significant failures.
Many times these are monetary, but they can also be intangible and include loss of reputation.
Learn to accept your responsibility and not pass on the buck and blame someone else for your mistakes. People will respect you for your maturity and appreciate honesty in taking the blame.
You will be known as a responsible person who can be depended on.
2. Accept low rewards with grace
Recognition is a great thing! If your hard work and contribution are recognized, you do feel good about it.
But there may be situations where your efforts might not be sufficient or someone else may have performed better or your perception of good effort might be completely different from what’s required.
In these cases, you may not progress at the pace you like.
The career lessons you need to learn here is to accept the decision gracefully and make an effort to improve it. By acting out or badmouthing about your boss or team you are doing a disservice.
Learn to improve continuously and if it’s not working then take drastic measures.
3. Don’t settle on your accomplishments
The early stages of your job life are exciting. They are full of milestones you can achieve, but the career upwards is tougher.
You may have made excellent sales in the first two years of your job, but that does not give you the luxury of settling in the third year.
You are doing a job, and you need to keep performing consistently.
One of the best career lessons that will keep you steady in your future career is to continue building on your accomplishments. Never stop aiming for more because the parameters of expectations will always keep changing.
4. Always do the right thing and be ethical
Whether you fail or succeed to follow the career lessons mentioned so far, make sure you do not fail in following this one at any cost.
Always stay on the right path and be ethical in your job and responsibility.
You may be tempted at many times to cheat or budge from the right track, whether it is fudging your expenses report or copying a line of code from a co-worker.
Anything off the record will come back to you, and a great career is only built on laurels and not on sticks! Just make sure you always do the right thing.
As they say it, “What goes around, comes back around”!
5. Treat people like you would like to be treated
People management is one of the best career skills you can gain, and the fact that you should always treat people well is one of the most invaluable career lessons you can learn.
Yes, you will still come across people who are uncooperative or don’t treat you well but learn to stand up for yourself.
Never in your job experience take the first step to treat badly. They may be in lower positions than you, step up and treat them right.
6. Never Stop Learning
If you think learning ends with your final year exams or finishing a particular certificate course; you are wrong!
One of the most critical career lessons you can get is that you always need to keep learning. Whether it is a software engineering career or as a doctor, the learning never stops.
You will always need to stay updated in your field, keep abreast of the latest innovations and stay ahead of the learning curve.
By always being open to learning you will stay relevant and become valuable assets to your organization. In return, your company will reward you for it.
Are there any other career lessons you have learned during your job experience? Share them with us in the comments below and follow our blog for more such advice.
[…] But be careful that people don’t get used to stuffing you with their own work load. The work should be allotted by the ones who are supposed to do so (bosses). The skill sets you learn here will help you throughout your career. […]