15 Things Successful Professionals Do: Part 1 of 3

Ilya Pozin wrote a great post on LinkedIn titled, “15 Things Successful People Do.”  Here is the Career-ology version of Pozin’s list with a focus on your career and professional success.

1) Fail – At some point in your career, you will encounter failure—your position is downsized, you get overlooked for a promotion or bonus, you choose a job that isn’t the right fit.  You cannot have success without failure. Stop.  Assess. Adjust. Keep moving forward.

When I was young, I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures.  So I did ten times more work.  ~George Bernard Shaw, Playwright

2) Set Goals – You must identify and develop the critical career skills with the same discipline of your formal college curriculum.  As a professional, you are responsible for establishing and working towards your goals.

People with clear, written goals, accomplish far more in a shorter period of time than people without them could ever imagine. ~Brian Tracy, Author

3) Don’t rely on luck – Luck is only one small part of the professional success equation.  Without mastering the right skills, you cannot rely on luck alone.

I am a great believer in luck.  The harder I work, the more of it I seem to have. ~Coleman Cox, Author (interesting note: Thomas Jefferson is often incorrectly cited as the source of this quote)

4) Track progress – Like setting specific goals, tracking your progress against your career goals is important.  Make adjustments when required, but stay focused on your progress.

Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning. ~Benjamin Franklin

5) Act – This is your career.  Take responsibility and take action.

If you’re trying to achieve, there will be roadblocks. I’ve had them; everybody has had them. But obstacles don’t have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don’t turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it. ~Michael Jordan, Professional Athlete

Stay tuned for “15 Things Successful Professionals Do: Part 2 of 3” next week.

 

Follow a Career Passion

Are you a college senior and not sure which career path to choose?  Are you currently in a job and questioning if you made the right choice?  Do you seek passion in your career, but aren’t sure where to find it?

Cal Newport, Georgetown University computer science professor and author of “So Good They Can’t Ignore You,” offers this advice from his own career experience:

To other young people who constantly wonder if the grass might be greener on the other side of the occupational fence, I offer this advice: Passion is not something you follow. It’s something that will follow you as you put in the hard work to become valuable to the world.

Read the full NY Times article here.

 

Career-ology Publishes Free Tools

Today, Career-ology published two free resource available.

The first tool, Overview-LinkedIn, provides an overview of the key features and functions of LinkedIn, tips on getting started and a list of additional resources for training.  LinkedIn is most popular professional social media site with more than 100 million members.  Are you on LinkedIn?  If not, you should be.

The second tool, Interview & Meeting Prep, can be used to prepare for an interview, a business meeting or networking situation with colleagues, customers or clients using popular social media tools and websites.  The information you collect will help you to establish a meaningful connection with the people you meet.  By learning more about the person with whom you are meeting, you can increase the likelihood of finding points of common interest.

To download these free tools (.pdf) from Career-ology, click on the Resources page.