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Career considerations in today’s changing economy and technology

| Updated: October 24, 2017 13:35:25


Career considerations in today’s changing economy and technology

The pace at which the world is growing is an indication for today's employees and the new graduates to constantly update and adapt themselves with the changing economy and technology. Additionally, they also need to learn about the changing career alternatives and start evaluating the traditional practices and beliefs.

 

The following are a few factors that may help the young professionals and graduates in taking better decisions.

 

Having a control over time and resources

 

If an individual does not learn how to utilise time and resources, then more often than not, the individual may not be able to reach the heights of success they want to. The common notion that one has to work day and night to attain success does not necessarily hold true. In fact, most of the successful entrepreneurs and businesspersons like Jack Ma, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs and others often urged on maintaining a work-life balance. Failure to maintain balance or not giving sufficient time to oneself often lead to inefficiencies at workplace. The strategy should be to properly harness the time in the workplace in a way that leads to maximum productivity and use the rest for self-development and engaging with dear ones. Likewise, employees must understand that resources should be used at the right place and if time and money are wasted, it will only increase operational costs.

 

Learning to adopt effective ways of overcoming failure

 

We have heard failure is the pillar of success and one should never give up no matter what the circumstances are. While this may be the differentiating factor in today's world, it may not be the same in future. Founder of Ford Motor Company Henry Ford once said, 'Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.' Today, flaws are dealt more strictly than ever before with employers looking to retain only the best for their companies. Hence, it is important to analyse the flaws and evaluate the mistakes so that the best possible solutions can be applied next time to avoid failure. The same rule applies for the organisations. One of the famous quotes of Jack Welch, former CEO and chairman of General Electric 'an organisation's ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly is the ultimate competitive advantage,' perhaps highlights the importance of adopting effective methods to overcome failure and implement lessons learnt from past experiences.

 

Treating social interactions as a valuable asset

 

Socialisation has been identified to be one of the key skills of the present time and future. Be that the first day at workplace or dealing with companies across borders, communication skills of the individuals will be tested. Social interactions also offer huge amount of knowledge sharing these days. One can learn many different things regarding work, culture, business operation, skills etc. through socialisation. Social interactions also help one build better network and relationships with various stakeholders of the community. However, experts often said that, in order to get the most out of these social interactions, one needs to know how to communicate with others and approach the interaction in a certain way that creates a strong impression. Hence, they urge individuals to start treating social interactions as a prominent skill that is equally important as any other soft skill.

 

Evaluating the traditional belief of 'perfect career growth can be achieved by doing one job'

 

It is difficult to figure out an exact path for one's career. Hence, proper goal setting is important in today's world. However, the dynamics of job and its required skills are changing. Technology is replacing most of the manual jobs and with digitalisation at its peak, routine jobs are becoming less attractive for employees. Those who have the required talent and skills to switch jobs are doing so these days. Employees prefer a flexible organisational structure where they can have an opinion and play a greater role in the organisation's performance. Having a wide range of experiences in multiple jobs can often give employees an upper hand over many other competitors. One question, however, arises is why employees of this generation change their jobs more often than their previous generations. Is it only because of money? According to a Forbes article titled, 'Millennials, Stop Apologising For Job-Hopping', millennials change jobs due to a number of factors like being dissatisfied with the work environment, seeing a stronger career growth in the other company etc. The article also highlighted that employers are gradually removing their negative stance against job-hoppers.

 

The writer is a student at the Institute of Business Administration (IBA), University of Dhaka,
[email protected]

 

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