By Rhymer Rigby
Being ahead
of the career curve is essential to ensure you're protected in the long and
short term. Rhymer Rigby explains how to embrace change,
rather than fear it.
Future proofing your career and
being ahead of the curve are two sides of the same coin. If you're doing one
correctly, you should also be doing the other. But they're not quite the same
thing.
Future-proofing your career means
ensuring you are as employable in the future as you are now. You need to stand
back and think about your job strategically, rather than just letting it happen
to you. Look at the bigger picture: what's happening in your sector; where's
the growth; which jobs are vulnerable; how do you measure up?
Think about what you know
As the world speeds up, your
technical skills will have an ever shorter lifespan and you need to learn
constantly. Don't just confine yourself to your field, either. Read up on
fields adjacent to yours, the idea being that if your role disappears, you have
other options. You don't want to be the workplace equivalent of an animal that
can live only in one species of tree. Rewrite your CV every year; if you can't
think of something new to put on it, you need to think about where you're
going.
Look at your sector and organisation
You should be working in an
organisation that's facing the future head on rather than one whose best years
are behind it. The same is true of your sector. You want an industry which is
driving change, rather than one that is being pummelled by it.
Work on your relationships
People often view building working
relationships as a luxury when times are tough. But being liked and trusted can
be more of a differentiator than being competent. Keep in touch with your
network and ensure you're visible and easy to find. A network that extends
beyond your workplace and includes clients, headhunters and competitors is a
good insurance policy if things go bad.
Aim to be agile and adaptable
Rather than having the mindset of
someone who is happy to serve out their time, be psychologically ready to move
and the kind of person who lands on their feet; a realistic idea of your
abilities and what they're worth will help. Focus on the positives be
optimistic; when companies look at making redundancies, those who have an upbeat,
can-do attitude are very rarely first in line.
If future proofing your career is
dealing with bigger picture and long term, staying ahead of the curve is more
immediate. It's the kind of thing you can work on when you have 15 minutes to
spare.
Broadly speaking there are two
aspects to being ahead of the curve. One is informational. At its most basic,
this is simply keeping up with the news that affects your industry. But those
who truly want to be ahead will also keep abreast of areas that are either general
or tangentially affect their industry.
Being up to speed on general
current affairs and areas beyond your immediate role is a good thing in itself,
but is also likely to give you greater insights and vision.
The internet has made this far
easier to do this. Look up TED
talks that interest you, set up Google alerts for yourself and customers
and follow influential people on Twitter. You do need to be selective, though.
The personal side involves
identifying who and what can help you move forward in your career and working
on these relationships; an example might be knowing what is important to not
just your boss, but also your boss's boss. Don't forget office gossip either:
it is often a better guide to what will be happening in three months time than
the official channels.
Of course, there's no point in
being ahead of the curve, if you're the only one who knows it. Demonstrate what
you know, for example by emailing your boss interesting articles you've come cross
across. Make yourself the go-to person in the office for your area and speak up
in meetings. Put yourself forward, rather than hanging back. And spend some
time around the watercooler immersing yourself in the organisation's less
formal sources of news.
Although all this might seem a lot,
the trick is to make many of these actions habitual – and this is really where
staying ahead of the curve segues seamlessly into future-proofing. On one hand,
you read The Economist every week on the train and on the other, you do a
gap-analysis on your career every six months. It's about covering yourself in
both the long and the short term and ensuring you're the kind of person who
looks forward to change, rather than fearing it.
Rhymer Rigby is the author of a
new book, The Careerist
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