Job and Career |

Learn from the School of Hard Knocks to Gain Business Career Success

One of my college roommates had a brother who was a graduate business student and often visited our rooms. Since one of my possible career choices was to work in business, I asked this business student many questions about his studies and career choices. Everything he said expanded my knowledge and made me more interested in a business career.

This information meant a lot to me because I grew up in a small city where there were only two large employers, the Santa Fe Railway and the U.S. Air Force. Neither organization provided opportunities to learn about executive success in a large corporation.

When I began graduate business studies, I was pretty smug, thinking that I knew just what needed to be done: Get a prestigious degree and wait for highly attractive employers to bid for my services.

Talking with the other business students made me realize that I had a lot to learn about career success. I didn’t even understand what executives did in different industries.

My complacent eyes were opened wide one day when a management consultant from the famous McKinsey firm made a presentation. At the end of the discussion, I asked one of the other students who got to do what this presenter did for a living. My classmate quickly responded, “Strategy consultants.” I asked, “What’s a strategy consultant?” He responded that these were people who worked for McKinsey or The Boston Consulting Group. I remembered those answers and later applied to both firms, not quite knowing what to expect.

Even with all of this knowledge, I was totally unclear about how you went from being a management consultant to having a successful business career working for a large corporation. I guessed that someday a client might hire you. And that’s what did happen to me after I became a strategy consultant.

The key lesson from my experience is that you can have a wonderful education at a university and still lack important knowledge about the most fundamental elements of developing your business career.

Students typically prefer to get information about potential careers from fellow students and professors, but research shows that students and professors provide incomplete information. It’s better to also speak with people who have been developing a career for a decade or so to find out what lessons they learned in the school of hard knocks.

I was recently reminded of this source of information to make more effective business career plans when I corresponded with Dr. Robert Hartinger, a banking executive in Germany who is a Ph.D. graduate of Rushmore University. Dr. Hartinger kindly agreed to share his career experiences and lessons with me so that I could pass them along to you.

Dr. Hartinger started off presuming that the quality of your education was very important to career success. After graduating from his business program at a German university, he soon learned that you have few occasions to apply any of the theoretical knowledge that most schools provide. As a result, new graduates are stuffed full of knowledge and theory that has little relevance to what their employers need.

Instead, degrees qualify people to be considered for certain jobs. Many employers pride themselves on hiring from certain schools and restricting top jobs to those with the most advanced graduate degrees.

Traditional schooling provides few insights into what various industries and types of jobs are like. If students aren’t careful, they’ll seek a type of work that they won’t like. There are two alternatives available:

1. Examine industries and jobs carefully to set the right objectives.

2. Study at a school where you get practical experience in applying theoretical knowledge which gives you a sense of what a career doing that work might be like.

Dr. Hartinger doesn’t rule out the first alternative, but he’s confident that the second one is essential. If possible do both, but at least do the second. From what you learn, he also recommends that you focus on just a few opportunities. Otherwise, your attention and energies will be too widely scattered.

A lot of business success depends on your personality. That’s something that graduate schools often ignore. Outgoing people with pleasing, helpful personalities will do a lot better than grumpy, self-absorbed geniuses who rarely talk to anyone.

Many studies show that the ability to connect to other people in the organization greatly helps both job effectiveness and advancement. Why? It’s simple: You can’t know all of the answers, but with help from others you can do a great job.

But it’s not enough to simply be a connection point within the organization. You also need to add skills that improve your effectiveness.

Here’s where online learning can make a difference. People don’t care where you learn a skill; they are just pleased when you add one that’s relevant to your situation.

Today, many companies offer financial assistance for those who wish to learn new skills. When that assistance is provided over the Internet, costs are reduced and you can take more courses than those who enroll in classroom-based courses. In addition, learning while you work allows you the chance to apply what you are learning. In that way, you can sift through lots of theoretical knowledge to get just what you need. Dr. Hartinger also notes that if an online school offers flexibility in designing courses, your skill improvement can be even greater.

Ideas To Consider Before Starting A Work From Home Business

If you begin a business with your own hands then it is the safest work from home business rather not the one in advertisement or one your friend is advertising.

To get favorable outcome in the business you should not to quit midway like a lot of people do. Below are some steps to begin the home-based concern which will run successfully instead of simply being a drain of money and time.

Evaluate your skills

Look upon your skills like which you are actually fine at. For example, you might be really a creative individual, or the individual who is actually fine at serving items or the human with the talent of communicating. The skills are actually the foundation for any prosperous company venture, comprising the work by home service.

Test your skills

This is the thing which you will be able to do. There is no big difference between skills and talents, skills are active and talents are passive. Or, in other words, you are abided with some skills however as you study you build up talents over time. For example, the creative individual might have first-class talents for writing or drawing or designing. The individual who got the skill for attending to point might get organizational talent or firm accountings.

Place your skills and talents together and make ideas for business

The outlined way of performing the task here could work for beginning any type of service, however since we are concentrating on work from home jobs, the doubt actually is, “With these type of skills and talents, what type of home-based service can one begin?”

Imagine you are one of people who are organizational and accounting talents and the skills to back it up. Few of home base job ideas you find with may comprise:

- Clerking

- Tax preparation

- Pro PDA

- Business handler

When you are getting along this kind of practice, of course, you may have more than two or three talents, therefore you will discover that the list of potential home base job ideas is lengthier.

Therefore once you have selected the work at home jobs idea you are passionate about, begin going through the job plan. If you consider that you are carrying out everything just like your job plan then it could do more than anything other.

Hence if you are looking to begin a home-based service, then you have to neglect all home-based business job advertisements or promotional mails. You have to understand that there is no shortcut to begin the home-based business successfully.

So by following the above outlined steps rather, you may end up with the thought that truly work from home job has the possible to run successfully, getting you the satisfaction and the income you have been expecting.

Related Business Job Articles

International Business Careers

The continuing growth in the international job market is becoming more and more challenging as expectations for new international job and career opportunities rises. A lot of people are considering international business careers mainly because of the great opportunities and rewards it offers to the qualified. International business careers are not only rewarding and challenging, but fast paced as well.

If youre considering an international career then you may want to check on a few things to help you decide if you have what it takes for working in an international job environment:

Are you judgmental? The most important factor in business careers environment is the ability to accept and work within the customs, beliefs, culture, and attitudes of a particular country. Having a strong personality and personal background experience which makes a majority of successful business executives may be the worst attitude in an international business environment. The only way to succeed in international business is to build strong relationships that encourage local employees to cooperate.

Are you the task-oriented type or the people-oriented type?

Accomplishing corporate goals and objectives are primary in an international assignment, however many cultures throughout the world considers people, family, and community as the most important aspect and so being too task-oriented may jeopardize productivity. Knowing everything possible about the culture you are possibly going into is a good place to start to identify whether or not you can accept this culture.

Do you welcome changes or are you a flexible person?

Being open to unexpected challenges and situations which may sometimes be uncontrollable, is one of the important qualities a person considering an international business career must possess.

Is the thought of family and friends around you more appealing?

An International business career means a little sacrifice on the family and friends, as it is less likely in the present economic environment that companies will pay for family relocation. Nowadays, business careers contracts have been shortened to the 12-18 month contracts than the older 2-3 year agreements. This allows companies to get around the expensive relocations. The International business career requires your ability to function efficiently and effectively away from home, family, and friends.

Is having your spouse with you a must?

A spouse of a person considering international careers should also be aware of the changes that will be gone through. It is nice for a spouse to be in a foreign assignment, but it is not likely that the spouse can also have work in the foreign country which means that they may be at home all day adjusting to the new environment. In fact, it much more difficult for the spouse to be in a foreign country doing nothing and feeling isolated which may cause problems.

Are you willing to take the risk?

Does the fear of a risky place for certain nationalities bother you? Although the chances of being injured by a terrorist act is very small, some people in countries tend to act differently around foreigners and can make for a psychologically hostile and may result to an unhappy working and social environment.

An International Business career opens a wide range of great opportunities for people, but knowing and understanding what you are getting into is very important, this will determine your success and failure in your chosen field.