Welcome to Bright Hub’s Career Hub! Explore expert articles, guides and tips on career planning and development from landing your first professional job, to succeeding at work and getting promotions! Today it is rare for a person to work at the same job for his or her until retirement. If you’re like the average US citizen, you may change jobs or careers between 3 to 10 times in your lifetime! Quitting your job or changing careers could be because of financial reasons, boredom, relocation or personal reasons. Luckily, Bright Hub has all the information you need to make your career planning and job transitions smooth. Start by reading profiles of different occupations to find out what job is best suited to your strengths, education level and location. This is the first step in planning your career path.
Bright Hub also offers tips and advice on searching for a job, creating a resume and preparing for interviews. Learn how to negotiate job offers, ask for a promotion or a pay raise, and learn how to get along with co-workers. Also know your employee rights and gain valuable insight into employment law, unemployment benefits, maternity leave, sexual harassment, discrimination and other issues. Read expert articles and guides, network with peers and professions, comment and share your experience. We’re happy to join you in the ever growing process of your career development and planning!
Achieving your goals is not a foregone conclusion. There will be surprises along the way - both ‘good’ and ‘bad’. And even the ‘bad’ can be ‘good’ if you can learn something from them. You’ll need motivation - and a positive attitude – to keep moving forward, step by step. And nothing will help you to keep a positive attitude like being grateful every day! Be grateful for that ‘good’ thing that happened to you…and for that ‘bad’ thing too – provided you took away a good lesion from it and ‘turned the lemon into lemonade’!
This step is where you begin to set your goals – from a place where you have clearly identified what you want and where you have reconciled with your past. If you’re lacking in that clarity, go back and write down what you think you want – in all domains of your life. And if you still feel a strong sense of cynicism, go back and examine the potential beliefs that are sure to sabotage you…and replace them with new beliefs that to you are liberating.
Have you ever set a goal – for the 2nd…or 3rd…or nth time!? How frustrating! Obviously, something is holding you back…or you really don’t want it very badly after all. Unless the goal is totally unachievable for some reason, it’s likely that your obstacle is something from the past. It could be in the form of doubts that you have – limiting beliefs that are holding you back. In order to liberate yourself from those doubts…and eliminate the frustration from trying the same thing yet again with eroded confidence…you need to find a way to put the past in the past.
Writing down what you want may seem like an obvious step in goal setting. However, it’s only a first step – and it’s often the one and only step for many goal setters. There are several keys to doing it effectively – in a way that will help bring you closer to realizing your goals. One is to get you to dream a little bit…to clarify what it is that you want out of life.
Are you at the very beginning of your career - or in the later stages? In the former case, you need to think more about where you want to be than where you have been. In the latter case, you need to consider what you have done to this point - as that usually provides a lot of direction for your next steps. In the earlier stages, it can be challenging to gain a focus, whereas in later stages it can be difficult to think about things out of a particular range of focus!
It can be helpful to take some various tests that can give you some insights about yourself - and about other people with whom you might work – and how you work in various situations. These can enable you to more confidently and comfortably set a direction, manage a situation, or develop some aspect of your capabilities. Some examples of these tests include: Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), Career Strengths Test, and the MAPP Career Assessment Test, but there are many more.
Preference for hard skills versus soft skills is a key career development consideration. Hard skills, where there is definite knowledge and expertise, is preferable to many people. Soft skills, which includes such things as communications and ‘people skills’, may be your preference. Ideally, anyone will have some combination of both – but there is an inherent preference and a tendency to rely on one more than the other. In terms of career the best combination for you?
You may prefer a more structured environment…or a more loosely structured environment. It’s a personal preference, and in all likelihood any environment will necessarily have elements of both. Your preference, and the jobs and environments that you desire will surely have a clear influence on how you develop your career – and your skills. In the end, you just need to know what you are doing…but how you get there is up to you.
For medical reasons, implantable technologies such as a pacemaker, help to regulate someone’s heart. Other implanted functions have been used to help the deaf hear and may one day be used for treatments for Parkinson’s Disease, epilepsy, and Tourette’s syndrome. They might also in the near future be engineered to help control obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). While information and communication technology (ICT) seems promising on one hand, employees have had microchips embedded in their hands for work issues.
Have you already logged your time in the workaday world? Maybe you just want to be intellectually stimulated. If you are digitally savvy or have lots of valuable life experience, you may just want to return to college to continue learning or even to accelerate a new career.
