Have you checked YOU?

I have had the rare privilege to support a lot of people in their quest to unlock the next level in their career – whether in finding a job, switching between jobs or career paths, or simply around unlocking their X-factor (as my friend and sister Dupe tagged the last #CareerBrainStormingSession).

On the heels of this, the shocking & limiting perspectives we tackled (with the help of these amazing speakers - Tunde, Seyi, Adebola and Dinma ) on Saturday at the CBS 3.0 and the several people who reach out to me daily, I thought to share this – The most basic and important ingredient you need to unlock ‘YOU’ is WHAT YOU CURRENTLY HAVE ACCESS TO !!! And I have heard a lot of people echo back – ‘Oh, I don’t even have a job?’ , ‘My current job has nothing to offer’, ‘I do not have any skills’, I do not even know where to start from’ among several other lines.

You need to step back and think through these –

1.What about your person, past and current tasks can be of value to other people, a prospective employer or the world around you?

I have been both angry and amazed at a lot of people after spending time with them asking the right questions around what they do and how they have expressed these. For example I interacted with someone who had his role abbreviated into 3 letters on his CV and LinkedIn profile, 3 letters that I could not make sense of. 3 letters behind which he buried away the amazing things and results he brings to his employer daily. Employers look out for value. Abbreviations hardly convey this. What are the key results you are recording? Communicate these with the use of metrics - for example, 'I developed a customer management tool that cut down the waiting time per customer by about 50%'

Once discovered, then ask…

2. Are you properly articulating this – in your daily encounters, your CV, your LinkedIn profile etc? What exactly are you doing with the minimum of 4 hours daily (5pm – 9pm) left after you contribute to your current employer?

Why get off the bed shortly before the time you are required to be at work when you can gain an extra hour to add an extra skill to yourself? You invest not just your working hours to your employer but the other hours it takes to prepare to get to work (including your commuting hours), yet you expect to grow at the pace your current company grows at?

You seek a job yet you spend less than 1 hour a day actively working around this forgetting that your only job at that moment should be preparing and seeking for a job? Consistently researching companies, identifying requisite skills and adding them to yourself and ensuring you follow closely the people who currently do the jobs you aspire to be in.

One of the speakers at the CBS mentioned that s/he was recently seeking for someone with a required set of skills who s/he was going to pay $1000 DAILY to engage. YES, there are jobs out there irrespective of where you are. The question is - Do you have or are you building the requisite skills?

Preparation meets opportunity. There are people out there who you can have assist you in getting there (around articulating your details etc) but the question is,

Are you showing enough grit? 

#CareerDevelopment #HumanResources #JobInterviews #PeopleManagement #PersonalDevelopment

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Privileged to have worked across the high-capital construction, fast-paced e-commerce & the precision-driven outsourcing industries; 'Kayode KOLADE is a Business Strategist and Project Manager with experience in People, Process & Operations Optimization, a Soft Skills Trainer and Mentor with a creed to continuous improvement. A Fellow of both The Institute of Leadership & Management and The Learning & Performance Institute.