To be honest, I’m still making so many blunder career mistakes. And I’m pretty sure you’ve also made your thousands on your career path. Lots of them probably. It’s always okay to do mistakes and learn by falling over. Nobody has the perfect roadmap drawn out there on the roads of career planning; we all have bruised with own struggles in the past and courageously moved on with great lessons.
So, let’s take notes on some most disastrous (yet common) career mistakes that we have made in our lives to get that dream promotion, next job move or to accelerate in our new career:
1) Making compromise on pay hike while accepting a new job offer
It is never about you being “too greedy or demanding” and so please stop bothering yourself. Unfortunately, many new hires deliberately skip to bluntly speak about their desired salary figures because they’re afraid to counter the original salary package that is being offered even if they deserve more. They don’t want to upset the new employer which is a big mistake. Salary negotiation is the most vital step you must consider while accelerating in your career. It’s always a wise decision to put all your achievements and positive metrics that justify your candidature as the most valuable addition to the new employer during an interview or when negotiating for a higher salary.
2) Never speak up when you don’t understand something
In today’s fast-paced (pressurized) work life, we often find ourselves stuck in many weird situations where our “Never-Say-No” attitude sucks and being a can-doer isn’t genuinely enough. We feel like a deer in headlights with no clue where to start or who to speak to about the emerging problems (there might be no clarity on the new tasks assigned to you by manager/ new educational concept) we’re struggling with. The biggest of all the career mistakes: you pretend to understand even when you have not actually understood anything and run the risk of making a fool of yourself. There is no shame in admitting the truth that you didn’t get what was being said. This is a very common situation and you must, therefore, treat such moments very casually and speak up whenever you need right guidance instead of making a big deal out of a conversation failure.
3) Not running spell or grammar check before sending an email
Have you ever felt embarrassed for writing a sloppy email with lots of unstructured sentences, spelling errors and grammar errors, mistakenly sent to all, approximately 50 people? It might be a very innocent mistake, but in the eyes of your project manager, it can be a flagged issue followed by email yelling. The lesson for you is to be very careful about running a spelling and grammar check and do yourself a favor.
4) Never stop learning even in the worst of jobs as your skillset will always pay you off
Always remember that your skills never leave you aside even in the worst of scenarios, whether it is about cracking an interview for a new job or impressing an audience. The people with knowledge always go on to find a new job of their choice whereas the others keep whining, participate in office politics, agitations for increasing wages, pensions and what not. The people with knowledge are always confident about their skills and tend to rise above everybody and everything. Reading books, journals, giving certification exams is the key to enhancing one’s skill set.
5) Prioritize your work intelligently
When you are piled up with a never-ending queue of office work, the key rule of thumb is work smartly by proper time management skills to complete all the given tasks without losing sight of priorities. One common mistake people do when overloaded with work is they react to what others desire.
Do not waste your time pleasing someone else’s by completing their urgent work, and even in the worst case scenario of walking an extra mile for someone you make sure that your hard work is duly compensated. Go proactive by identifying your highest priorities that justify your performance in your given position and of course, the assigned time frame.
Always remember many times in our life what we perceive as a mistake is actually the most precious gift and eventually we find that lessons learned from that discouraging experience prove to be of great worth to grab those greater career opportunities in the future.
This article is written in partnership with Topdistancemba.com – India’s No 1 Distance MBA portal. It serves as an essential daily e-platform for Distance MBA Aspirants, Students, and MBA Educators.