Career Advancement Opportunities: Why You Shouldn’t Ignore Them.

You’re just out of school, or you have finished your graduation. You are supposed to make a decision. But I’m here to tell you, that it is not going to be the final one you’ll ever have to make. Yes. This is something everyone misses out on when advising you which career to take up or which path to go. But thinking about staying at just one road for the rest of your life and expecting yourself, you, fresh out of college, to make such an ever-binding decision is a deathtrap and a big scam. Don’t fall for it. On the contrary, I’ll ask you to go on various paths and explore. Don’t settle for the first internship you get selected for or the first job that you get offered. Don’t pass on career advancement opportunities just because you have picked one road.

There are people in their 40s changing their entire career paths and starting afresh, if you keep experimenting in your initial stage of working, you won’t need to do this in your 40s. You need to keep an open mind and eye for working opportunities that suit you, that challenge you, that offers you your dream workplace environment, or maybe your dream project. When you limit yourself to just one taken path you’re probably not being too farsighted cause eventually you’re gonna get better at what you do, and the same job, same position, the same environment is going to bore you out and you’re going to regret why you stopped at the first opportunity you got.

What you should do, is

•  keep applying, keep sending your résumé and C.V. to various companies, freelancers, startups or
• just browsing through linked in and other sites.
• Attend all those networking parties that take place in your city, attend the conventions, and make contacts, 
• send out your cards, and make friends from other organizations. 

There’s a two-fold benefit to doing this, 

1. One you come to know of all the great opportunities available in the market,
2. Two you can never be fooled by your organization if they are treating you as an underdog. 

What stops us from doing this?

Our hesitation and procrastination. We fear better growing opportunities as we don’t need it, or maybe I’m being too greedy about it. But I’ll tell you what, this is your time to be greedy about it, you’re young and eager to learn, making you the ideal employee and ten years later you’re gonna regret you didn’t apply to various places in your most applicable age. I know applying to a number of places is putting yourself at risk, but it’s worth it. Why?

• You get more comfortable with rejection. You don’t take it emotionally but more objectively, having a better chance of learning from it, and improving your next application.
• You get better at your applications. You learn to write the application more company-centric and more efficiently. You will learn to omit the unnecessary part.
• You get better at interviews. Since now you are gaining more experience, you seem more confident and secure about your abilities to your interviewer, plus you have more stories to tell.
• You will be valued more at your own company. Let’s face it, a little healthy competition is always in our favor. When your company knows you are wanted at other places too they pay more attention to you, they know your worth and they respect it.
• You gain lifelong experience.

I remember, after my 12th standard I was applying to various colleges and I would seek advice from my elder siblings, and here’s what they said: apply everywhere. No matter if you think you would get in or not, but just apply. And I did, to the nearest of colleges to the farthest of them, I even applied to degrees that weren’t a direct predecessor of my high school subjects but eventually they followed my interests in writing. And I chose those. I know I had all the opportunities and I chose one of them, voluntarily, I was not stuck with it. It gives a lot of power.

So the next time you thinking of talking yourself out of career advancement, consider the following points:-

• Watch for trigger words like, ‘I can’t do this’, or ‘I’m not ready for this yet’, ‘I don’t think this opportunity is for me’.
• Remember: there’s never a perfect time. You have now and only now. Applying won’t hurt and you’ll gain experience is the only case scenario!
• Weigh the cost of inaction. You being lazy is a big no-no. You need to understand the cost you’ll be paying by letting opportunities pass by you.
• Pay attention to your emotional state. Seek out experiences that scare you a little bit, trust me the stories will come in hand, at the next interview! 

So this is why you shouldn’t ignore all the career advancement opportunities that come your way.