Building a career in modern society. The path to a professional career. Stages of career and professional advancement

Enough has been written about building a career. Advice on the use of various construction techniques and techniques career strategy sometimes they even contradict each other. But general principles and approaches to how to build a career correctly still exist. Let's try to combine them into specific steps and give a brief description.

Defining the Goal

How to correctly define a successful career? Most ordinary people associate it with significant earnings or income, high status and a managerial position, an adequate balance between the intensity of activity and the rewards received, team management, and making key decisions.

Also, there are many accompanying successes - the usefulness of one’s own activities, respect from others (specialists and professionals, acquaintances and relatives), stability and influence. Although you can add a few more circumstances, overall this is a complete picture.

P principles of career development

Successful people in their biographies, as well as psychologists who specialize in achieving success, identify 12 principles (steps) for properly building a career.

Love for the work in which a person is engaged. We are talking about an emotional attitude to one’s activity: a person, with his hard and intense work, can achieve quite a lot in terms of his career, even if his own occupation is not very to his liking. But subject to a positive attitude towards an activity that can be called a favorite activity, a person will achieve much more. It is this kind of thing that will be sufficient motivation to achieve heights and will significantly increase interest in the final result.
Lowest position - first step in career. Starting from the bottom, you can comprehensively, from the inside, master the type of activity in which to build a career. Most large firms and companies tend to increase own staff, who has work experience (albeit in lower positions), than to hire people from outside. Interest in activities, even in a minor position, must be present - this is the condition that will contribute to upward mobility.
Cultivating perseverance and perseverance. These character traits help a lot in building
successful career - they help you find a suitable position at the beginning of your journey, force you to move forward and not mark time, overcome obstacles and bypass obstacles on the career ladder. A person who gives up will not find his way.
We need to remember everything. Any important information must be recorded - if not in your own memory, then in a diary (on paper or on a computer). This is essential for accuracy and commitment in completing tasks, in activities in general. You need to accustom yourself to observe all the subtleties - this is how you achieve an impeccable reputation as an employee and professional.
Recourse. Be inquisitive, especially at the initial stages of your career: you should not be embarrassed by the questions that arise - they can point you in the right direction when completing a task. Of course, you should not overuse questions, but you need to be able to ask the most necessary ones on time. You should also not neglect to ask for help - the main thing is to learn everything quickly and become independent.
Teamwork skills. When building a career, it is important not only your own skills and abilities, but also the ability to work in a team and “not fall out” of the team. This is especially important when carrying out any project: specialists united in a team are able to give much greater results - subject to well-coordinated work. Here you need: the ability to interact effectively in a team; see overall result and work for him, forgetting (for a while) individual interest; respond adequately to team requests.
Active networking. This will definitely come in handy in the future: those with whom we studied, worked together, and solved problems together also achieve success and will provide the necessary assistance. With adequate communication, you can turn to them for advice, help, and cooperation in completing the task. And it’s easy to find a new job through them.
Ability to study systematically. Focus on the continuous search for information necessary for activities, its periodic updating in order to always be “in the fashionable stream.” Promotion
professional qualifications, expanding the range of functions performed, mastering new professions - this will only help you constantly be on the wave of success.
Bad habits are unacceptable. They only get in the way, take up time and take away your health. The presence of such habits is an indicator for employers towards a negative characteristic of an employee applying for a position (for example, smoking takes away work time, interferes with concentration, because have to take forced breaks).
Initiative, but not “taking on” everything. It is necessary to determine the optimal balance between initiative and total workload. Increased initiative (at the level of fussiness) will give a lot of tasks that a person simply cannot physically cope with, in addition, the image of an “upstart” will interfere with his career.
Ability to anticipate the situation. This also applies to the field of activity - the area of the industry in which a career is being built, and the firm or company itself - whether there are prospects here or whether the activity is gradually fading away. In the second case, you need to immediately look for a more promising position in another organization.
A dead-end position is dangerous. A position with no opportunity for growth is the first step to career ruin. It is better to start from the very bottom, but in an organization with dynamics in the movement of personnel, than to remain in a stable and small organization where professionals work for years without changes or rotation. When moving to another position, you should also be careful - promotion and improvement may be imaginary (from the point of view of career dynamics).

The listed principles should set the right tone for a career, establish priorities and key points in its development.

Lecture on career

Name: Svetlana Berger, professional executive and career coach (PCC ICF)

Help: Professional executive and career coach (PCC ICF).

Career management expert (CMF) with 15 years of experience in Russia and Canada.

Representative of the International Association of Career Professionals in Russia, ACP Russia

Specializes in the implementation of a career management system in an organization and training in career coaching for managers.

N.G. What is a career? What is the best way to start looking for a job, your place?

S.B. A career is viewed as a sequence of professional activities and roles that express a person's commitment to act in accordance with his personal strategy for self-development and self-realization. The modern concept of a career is very broad: it can be hired or contract work, self-employment or creating own business. However, many people traditionally consider a career within an organization at the beginning of their professional journey. How much a person has chosen the right direction for his professional movement and is ready to invest his time in building his own career - his success, in fact, will depend on this. The person himself is responsible for his career. An organization can only provide some opportunities, and all decisions, all choices - conscious or unconscious - lie in the area of responsibility of each person. Therefore, starting a job search or searching for “your place” means taking responsibility for your career and developing the necessary skills for this.

N.G. Where is the best place for a young specialist to start in order to move his own path in his career?

S.B. First, decide what career success means to him.

For example, the hero of the musical “Jersey boys” about the famous musical group of the 60s, defined that he had found his job in life: “I realized that I achieved success not when I earned my first million in my life, but when my parents stopped insist that I go to a trade school." For a person, it is important not only material, but also an internal sense of himself, his path, the realization of his potential, the need to make positive changes in the world around him.

Success is usually determined by two things: it external factors and internal factors. External factors are what kind of car we drive, where we live, the watch we wear, etc. If a young man defines his successful career largely through external factors, then he must understand the seamy side of such “success.” People who are successful from an external point of view are sometimes very unhappy inside. A young specialist needs to understand whether he is ready to pay a high price in pursuit of external success, for example, this may be a lack of time for his personal life and interests, loss of contact with loved ones, constant internal conflicts, etc. In a word, become hostage to his external success or he needs something more. People, looking back on their lives, remember not the hours spent at work, but the positive changes they brought to the lives of other people.

Speaking about a successful career, try to move yourself 30-50 years into the future and answer the question: what from your life will you be pleased to remember? And then you will understand what true success is for you.

N.G. Do you think young people can understand the global nature of the topic?

S.B. If a person wants to manage his own career, then he begins to look for answers to questions on his own. And in the end, he understands that by building his life based on his abilities and values, there is a greater likelihood of not only achieving success, but also being happy, living in accordance with his goals, having achieved this external success.

When I work with participants in a career coaching program, we examine internal factors very carefully. What are internal factors? This is life balance. This is inner satisfaction, this is a feeling of self-realization, the correspondence of what you do to your personal values. The absence of internal conflict that takes away energy and joy of life, when every working day begins with the thought: “It’s Monday again, go to work again.” I think that if this idea is conveyed to young people, then representatives of generation “Y”, for whom a certain way of life is very important - freedom, independence, flexibility, will respond to this, and they will be curious to learn more about themselves, to structure and clarify their own intentions. And then an internal need will arise and the question: how to do this?

N.G. Yes it is. And how can people help themselves in this life?

S.B. People can begin to ask themselves difficult questions, reflect on their steps, and not just “go with the flow.” For example, think about what kind of activity you are ready for a long time, what your thoughts return to. In fact, we are starting to talk about a career building algorithm. On the one hand, the algorithm for building a career is surprisingly simple, but it is very difficult to implement because it requires discipline. Many of us set ourselves the task of doing fitness and sometimes hire a fitness trainer - a person who will ask them. There are many distractions in life. Many people know what to do in certain situations, how to start New Year how to start a new week, but for some reason they don’t do it. The same thing happens with building a career.

The career building algorithm could be described by creating a vector passing through two points. The first point is where a person is at the current moment, the second is where a person wants to be, his vision of a career in the future. Thus, we get a certain career trajectory. This is where work begins on building your own career. Sometimes it can be difficult to understand where “you are now” from within yourself; you need an outside perspective.

But the most difficult task is to draw point number two. Choosing a career direction largely depends on vision; a career is built from the future. In my practice as a career specialist, I often hear: “I know what I don’t want, but I don’t know at all what I want.” To answer this question, you need a) some self-research, b) a reality check - the market is changing, nothing stands still.

A career specialist becomes the very mirror that reflects where a person is now, where he is moving, and actually helps a person understand his own goal. It turns out that building a career is easy, but the most main point it contains the formulation of a long-term career goal.

N.G. If a person has formulated a goal, will it be easy for him to stick to this vector?

S.B. Indeed, this is so, because this is his internal goal, this vector correlates with his internal needs, and then purposeful movement begins, there are guidelines. The job a person is looking for should be as close as possible to this vector. Let's call the career a “vector” and the job a “point”. The ideal option is when this point lies on the career vector or is close to it. Otherwise, this movement is not towards your goals. Every job offer needs to be considered in relation to your career path. The presence of such a vector helps to quickly make a decision.

N.G. What will help you make the right choice when the point is not close to the vector?

S.B. Firstly, it must be a conscious choice of a person. If today he is in a situation where making money is important to him, this is a conscious decision. But this state will not always exist. This period will end, and another period may begin, when a person will be freer, when a person will have a desire to find something for himself. What I’m saying is that it doesn’t even matter what stage a person is at. It is important to understand that another period may come, and we must be prepared for it. We must know what we will do. People who do not prepare in advance, unfortunately, having gone through the period of “survival and making money”, are not ready to take on a new stage in their career. Start thinking about what they can implement, what they can do better, what kind of work is more suitable for them.

It’s not enough to build a career, it’s not enough to draw a vector—you have to move along it. It is no coincidence that when we build a career, we say a lot of things. We talk about how aware a person is of his goals, talents, and strengths. Then we look at what opportunities he has, what options, where he could apply them. We look at the labor market in a broad sense, it doesn’t matter whether you have experience or whether your education is adequate, in order to see all the opportunities. And the last thing is whether this is really the choice of the person himself, how much he trusts his choice. After this, movement begins in the chosen direction. This can be done independently or with the support of a career specialist. The main thing is not to lose speed, and for this a person must take responsibility and certain obligations. Sometimes it is much easier to blame a bad situation on the labor market, a bad boss, or an organization that does not provide any prospects for growth.

N.G. How to understand whether this is a search or movement, by trial and error, without a goal?

Is there an algorithm for successful career advancement?

S.B. Much depends on the uniqueness of the person and his situation. For example, one person can change the areas of his activity because he simply does not know how to do it differently, tries to go through the “trial and error” method, spends a lot of time on this - and as a result, life, having never found meaning, what he wanted. The other makes changes in his professional life consciously: he changes his areas of activity, because... this corresponds to his inner need for diversity, starting something new. And this is a conscious choice, on the basis of which his career trajectory is built. I know people who change companies every two years or so. The fact is that when they join a company, they very quickly help the company reach a good level. They become uninterested in supporting and accompanying what has been achieved - and they go to other companies and start this process all over again. This is the career he chose for himself. So the reasons for changing a company or area of activity can be very different.

Those people who simply move through the labor market unconsciously, without realizing why they are leaving one company or moving to another job, are less likely to find a job that suits them - they themselves do not know what they want.

N.G. It seems to me that it is very difficult to change professions like that.

S.B. First of all, it's very difficult. Secondly, it’s not very clear why. But if a person understands why he is doing this, it becomes a conscious decision, he manages his career.

Regarding changing universities, this is a completely different situation. Usually, a profession is determined before entering a university. When we enter a university, the university is already a kind of means through which we acquire a profession. The task of a university is not to help us answer the question of whether this is the right profession or not. The task of the university is to teach. And the university treats young people and middle-aged people as people who are capable of taking responsibility for this choice, capable of making decisions independently. IN in this case An attempt to determine at the expense of a university whether this is the right profession or not makes a person dependent on so many factors. There will be good teachers at one university, and we will fall in love with this subject. Then the question will arise: what will our choice of profession depend on? From other people? Or will it be ours internal choice, which will be based on our interests, on our values, on how we see our future career?

Second point. Very often, studying at several universities without entering a professional career after graduation indicates that a person, having acquired knowledge, postpones confronting reality and replaces it by entering the next university. But the stage of passing reality in building a career is very important, without it it is impossible to achieve self-realization. Reality becomes a test of your professional choices.

If I were working with this person, I would pay attention to the recurring facts in his life and ask questions: what makes a person alternate between universities? Why were these people attracted and not others? What would happen if the list of universities to study ran out? This is a very interesting research process that could lead us to a certain topic, the solution of which could greatly change not only a person’s career, but also a person’s life.

A career specialist, a professional in his field, will never give recommendations or ready-made solutions. He will listen to you, return what he heard, help you explore your potential and situation from different angles, look for alternatives with you, ask questions that will help you find your own answers and solutions.

N.G. How can a person choose a career specialist? Intuitive?

S.B. On the one hand, it is very important to trust yourself when choosing a specialist. Listen to the recommendations of others. Personally, I take recommendations very seriously. And if I recommend someone, then I understand that I also bear part of the responsibility for this. On the other hand, when we choose a specialist, in addition to intuition, we must understand well what we expect in principle from this specialist. No specialist will be very suitable for us if we ourselves do not know what we want from him.

N.G. Self-deception is when we are sure of something about ourselves...

S.B. The work of building a career begins with a certain stopping moment, when a person stops and asks himself the question: where to next?

Having answered this question, we solve a lot of other questions: what is the meaning of life? What is self-realization? These questions are no longer so disturbing, because the answers to them are found.

When visiting a career specialist, a person cannot expect to receive ready-made answers. He will receive new questions, but which will lead him to the goal that he really wants: his talents will be correlated with his functionality, and this will really be a job in the organization in which he will feel good.

Once, when I was speaking at a very large conference for financial directors in Moscow, they asked me: “You are talking about such complex things. It probably takes a lot of time?” The career building process takes two to three months, and at the end of the last month the implementation of your career plan begins. It’s just that many people don’t know how to start this process, what important elements to take into account, and, as a result, having tried many options for work, they still don’t find something for themselves that would bring satisfaction.

If you relieve stress in matters of choosing a profession, changing a job or career through the use of the technology about which we're talking about, then you will find that it is an enjoyable and interesting process to find a professional niche for yourself. Yes, you can trust chance and say: “By chance I will find such a job.” You can go by trial and error, but it often takes time. Or you can simply take control of your life into your own hands and, if you wish, calculate, check, think through and find “your place”, understand your career vector. This does not mean that the drawn vector never changes in life. Changes. A person moved to another country - the vector has changed. A person has changed his field of activity - the vector can also be adjusted. There are certain external or personal circumstances that can also influence. This vector can simply be adjusted along the way. If we know what to correct, if we know the guidelines that we have for correction. And then this is a conscious approach to building a career, and then what we are talking about is an authentic and harmonious career for yourself, which really brings joy to life. For me, a successful career is always associated with an inner feeling of happiness.

We spend too much time at work to engage in activities that make us feel bad. And happy is the person who realizes himself, has found his place, has found his calling. The question is - how to find it? There are certain technologies that have been working for many years in the West, which have been actively working for the last few years in Russia. And there are more and more people using these technologies. When a person has tried it on himself, he begins to recommend it to others. Behavior changes, ease and satisfaction appear from the activity in which a person is engaged. everyone around them begins to see this and they also have a desire to bring positive changes into their lives.

N.G. How can you influence your development and promotion within the company?

S.B. In this situation, it is important to understand: what do you want to change? where do you want to go and where are you coming from? Practice shows that people do not always have enough information about the position, the place, the company where they want to join. Many companies encourage internal mobility - the more information is collected, for example, before moving from one department to another, the less risk of making such a career change mistake.

What I'm talking about now is a concept that is missing from Russian market. It's called an informational interview. There is a certain technology for conducting informational interviews. Their task is not to get a job, but to get maximum information about that place, that position, that role, that area where we want to go.

I remember a funny incident: when I was working in Toronto five years ago, a very nice girl approached me and said that she wanted to be a lawyer. To my question: “What is the work of a lawyer for you?” she replied that this is speaking in front of an audience, speaking beautifully, establishing some logical connections, persuading others, a large number of contacts. In general, everything looked very beautiful and attractive. After two weeks of conducting informational interviews, meeting with specialists, and attending court hearings, she learned that 95% of a lawyer's job is working with documents, not public speaking. When choosing a professional path, you need to rely on facts, information, networking, and not on the idea that was spontaneously formed about any professional activity during your life.

N.G. How to organize your movement within the company? After all, an employer can fire you because of such an initiative.

S.B. If a person has done enough research that gives them confidence in this transition within the organization, it is important to prepare for this change.

Let me give you an example of a person who worked in international company in Moscow and within two years created the conditions for himself to move to the same company in France. In the same position, with the same functionality, with the same salary (as a result of the transition, the salary was increased by 30%. What did he do for this?

First, to make this transition, a person must become visible within the company. As long as we remain silent about our intentions, fearing the reaction of our leader and colleagues, the transition will be impossible. It is important not only to voice your intention, but also to prepare a rationale for it for others: what strengths of yours allow you to cope with this functionality as efficiently as possible? What work results have already proven this effectiveness? What results can management expect from you if you transfer? All these and other questions may be asked of you by management, and the answers should be clear, well thought out, taking into account both the company's goals and your personal goals. All this is possible if you have created new contacts, built relationships, and collected enough information about the needs and values of the subsidiary organization you want to move to.

Secondly, you need to pay attention to your personal branding within the company and identify those for whom it should first start working.

The transition to the head office of an international company (internal transition) became possible because the person was able to convey his goals to the company, show the benefits for the organization, and focused on the values that he could additionally bring to his role. And in the end, management made a positive decision and supported the person’s initiative.

If we return to the case when a person wants to switch, but is afraid to say so in the company, then this transition is truly impossible: simply no one will know about your intention and, therefore, will not be able to support you. A person limits himself.

N.G. If you present your desire correctly, will there always be people in the company who will support you?

S.B. In many companies there is a tendency to train “player coaches” from among those managers who are in the company. And this is very interesting, because any company is interested in accumulating and transferring knowledge. Knowledge is a great value accumulated within a company. You can take such an initiative, express yourself, demonstrate your internal reserves and achieved results. This transition could well be realistic. We are not saying that this is a 100% probability. There are, of course, risks and certain policies within the company that may not support your initiatives. But in any case, you retain freedom of choice, the main thing is that your choices are conscious.

Many of the companies I work with Special attention pay attention to internal mobility of employees. ( New employee taken from the outside requires large time and material investments). For the company, this is an opportunity to retain knowledge and experienced employees, for existing employees, without leaving the company, to bring changes to their role, functions, and daily activities. These changes will be more realistic if, first of all, the employee has clarity of his own professional purpose, and he will be ready to talk with management, based on the already demonstrated positive results in the company, knowledge of his strengths, and understanding how they can be manifested in the future and support the company's goals. However, before you voice your goals to management, be prepared to do your own research into your future field, role, and check whether this is truly your goal.

N.G. What if you don’t have enough experience, but the desired position matches your strengths?

A career is a person’s conscious trajectory within a profession or organization.

Types of business career

There are such types as intra-organizational And interorganizational career. The first assumes that a person develops and improves as a specialist and professional within the same company, while the second is a career in the same field, but in different companies.

Both the first and second types of careers are implemented in 3:

Vertical career direction– rise to a higher level of the structural hierarchy.

Horizontal – moving an employee to another functional area of activity. A horizontal career is a specialist career.

Centripetal– the movement of an employee to the leadership of the organization.

Man in progress labor activity consciously moves along the trajectory within the profession or organization that he has once chosen and corresponds to his skills, abilities, qualifications, ambitions and expected rewards.

Career Types

There are 7 types of professional careers:

Super adventurous a career involves a very high rate of advancement with skipping some stages of career development, or a sharp change in the field of activity.

Random - as the basis of a coincidence.

Joint – promotion with the leader.

Traditional career - gradual upward mobility, when everything depends on managerial qualities person, to a small extent from patronage and connections.
Sequential career is a crisis type, characteristic of periods of change that require the manager to adapt.
Pragmatic career – a change in the field of activity due to changes in the external environment.
Outgoing type of career - characteristic of a leader, when holding a position is the only goal.
Transformative career type – change of field of activity from high speed advancement, determination.
Evolutionary career type – the growth of the organization is determined by job growth.

Depending on the socio-economic situation, the form of ownership and the field of activity, the predominance of career types is formed.

Career stages

During a business career, a person usually goes through 5 stages:

Preliminary stage– if you are under 25 years old and you are preparing for work, and are also concerned about choosing a field, then you are definitely at this stage.
Formation stage– if you are under 30 years old, you are mastering a job and developing professional skills.
Promotion stage– you are under 45 years old, you are professionally developed and self-actualizing.
Completion stage– you are already over 60 years old, preparing for the transition to retirement, and are concerned about finding and training your own replacement.
Retirement stage– after 65 years, you are engaged in completely different activities, and not necessarily work.

These are your active actions to achieve success in your professional activities. It is closely related to professional growth and mastery. It is not only the goal itself, but the movement towards this goal. A successful career turns out to be the case when a person knows in advance not only what he wants, but also why he needs it, what he will do after achieving his goal.

Planning a professional path is the process of creating a step-by-step goal achievement, taking into account the “human factor” (i.e., patterns of human development, mental characteristics, etc.). Before planning a professional career, it is necessary to find out the person’s attitude towards it, the general emotional mood, what you mean by the concept of a career, because it is difficult, and perhaps impossible, to strive for a goal that you do not know what to call. It is also important to know what your level of motivation is. The level of motivation for activity depends on the motivation of a person to perform work tasks by activating his volitional sphere. Psychological factors involved in a specific motivational process and determining decision-making can include moral control, abilities, inclinations, external situation, etc. It often happens that a person takes specific actions without the motivation to achieve success.

A professional career is characterized by the fact that a person goes through various stages of development in his working life: choosing a professional path, training, entering a job, professional growth, support for individual professional abilities, etc. It is important to remember that a career does not begin at the moment of appointment to any position, but at the moment of choosing the area in which you can apply your abilities. The main condition for a successful career is the right choice of profession. The solution to this problem is based on taking into account several factors.

Factor 1

You need to know well the world of professions and the requirements that apply to a person performing a particular job. Clarify for yourself the formula of the chosen profession, taking into account possible backup options.

Factor 2

You need to correctly determine your interests and inclinations, assess your capabilities, health, abilities and compliance with the requirements of your chosen profession.

Factor 3

It is necessary to study the state of the labor market, its needs and regional characteristics.

Factor 4

It is necessary to proceed from real opportunities for obtaining education, retraining and advanced training.

Having done all this, you will be able to select for yourself several professions that interest you, and among them, find your one and only one, outline your professional route, and choose an individual path to achieving your goal.

Horizontal and vertical career

Distinguish horizontal career- this is growth professional excellence. It can develop in two directions: deepening and expanding. In the first option, you will try to master more complex shapes work, and as a result you will be able to perform operations that other specialists cannot do. At the same time, you will be respected and appreciated by both management and work colleagues. If you expand your professional capabilities, you can master related professions, which will give you independence from others and versatility when performing work. This path is also welcomed by management and colleagues.

In addition to horizontal, there is vertical career or administrative- this is growth in position and is associated with the ability to organize work. Qualities that define career success in professions it is:

education;
systematic and analytical thinking, the ability to predict the development of a situation, anticipate the outcome of a decision, the ability to think broadly and realistically at the same time;
communication skills, effective interpersonal skills, insight, ability to provide psychological impact and influence on other people;
high level of self-regulation, ability to manage one’s condition, development of self-control, stress resistance;
business orientation; activity, perseverance and determination, focus on decision-making, ability to solve non-standard problems and tasks, desire for constant improvement of professionalism;
realistic perception of one’s capabilities and abilities, high self-esteem (real perception of oneself, without self-deprecation).

Steps to building a professional career

Planning a professional career is a continuous process that lasts throughout your professional life. What steps do you need to take to build your career?

First step- this is a conscious and independent choice of profession, which requires from you continuous work effort, creative search for yourself, knowledge of your individual capabilities, your calling and your limits.

Second step- thinking through and drawing up (on your own or with the help of specialists) a personal professional and life plan, taking into account your abilities and possible obstacles and working out backup options in case of failure.

Third step- receipt by you vocational education, which has a great impact on the success of self-realization, career success, gaining public recognition, developing one’s abilities, achieving material well-being, and the like. In addition, in the modern world, professional knowledge and skills become outdated extremely quickly. Today the demand for readiness and ability to retrain and improve qualifications sounds more and more insistent. Without this condition, it is impossible not only to advance, but sometimes even to simply stay in your place.

Fourth step- this is the ability to find and get a job. It is important to have:

positive attitude towards employment;
the ability to effectively search and find information about jobs;
the ability to correctly compose documents necessary when searching for a job and finding employment, the ability to correctly write a resume;
the ability to provide information about yourself over the phone so that they want to meet you and get to know you better;
the ability to structure a conversation with a potential employer so that he wants to hire you and offer decent working conditions and pay.

A career is a person’s subjectively realized ideas about his work future, the expected ways of self-expression and satisfaction with his work activity. This progressive advancement up the career ladder; changes in skills, abilities, qualifications and remuneration associated with the employee’s activities. A person's life outside of work has a significant impact on and is part of their career. Career is advancement along a chosen path of activity, in other words, it is an individually conscious position and behavior associated with work experience and activities throughout one’s working life.

“Making a career” means achieving a prestigious position in society and greater powers, higher status, power, and a high level of income. This refers to prestige from the point of view of broad public opinion. There is a close connection between the concepts of “career” and “success”.

Striving for recognition and success, it is necessary to objectively assess your strengths and capabilities along this path. And the next question will not be superfluous: is the chosen goal achievable? Only sober analysis own desires and your internal potential will allow you to achieve real achievements.

Career development is a continuous process during which a person gets to know himself in order to choose his field of activity, and then a specific profession. When looking for the direction of your professional career and profession, you should pay attention to three significant aspects:

The profession should be interesting and exciting,

The profession must correspond to the abilities

Possibility of finding a job in this profession.

A person builds a career - the trajectory of his movement - himself, in accordance with the characteristics of internal and extra-organizational reality and, most importantly, with his own goals, desires and attitudes. We can identify several fundamental trajectories of a person’s movement within a profession or organization that will lead to different types careers.

Professional career - growth of knowledge, skills, abilities. A professional career can follow the line of specialization (deepening in one line of movement chosen at the beginning of the professional path) or transprofessionalization (mastery of other areas of human experience, associated, rather, with the expansion of tools and areas of activity).

Intra-organizational career is associated with the trajectory of a person’s movement in the organization. It can go along the line:

Vertical career - job growth;

Horizontal career - advancement within the organization, for example, work in different departments of the same hierarchy level;

Centripetal career - advancement to the core of the organization, the control center, increasingly deeper inclusion in decision-making processes.

There are certain stages of a career, the classification of which is usually based on a whole complex of different characteristics: age, accumulated experience, level of personal development, etc. You can give general characteristics stages, based on the fact that at different stages of a career a person satisfies different needs (Table 8).

Table 8

Stages of a manager's career and needs met

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Stages careers	Age, years	Achievements, goals	Moral Needs	Physiological and material needs
Preliminary		Study, tests for different jobs	The beginning of self-affirmation	Security of existence
Becoming		Mastering a job, developing skills, forming a qualified specialist or manager	Self-affirmation, the beginning of achieving independence	Security of existence, health, normal level of remuneration
Promotion		Advancement up the career ladder, acquisition of new skills and experience, growth of qualifications	Growing self-affirmation, achieving greater independence, beginning self-expression	Health, high level of pay
Preservation		The peak of improving the qualifications of a specialist or manager. Improving your qualifications. Youth training	Stabilization of independence, growth of self-expression, beginning of respect	Increasing wages, interest in other sources of income
Completion		Preparing for retirement. Preparing shifts for a new type of activity in retirement	Stabilization of self-expression, growth of respect	Maintaining wage levels and increasing interest in other sources of income

When meeting with a new employee, the HR manager should take into account the career stage that he is going through. this moment. This can help clarify the goals of professional activity, the degree of dynamism and, most importantly, the specifics of individual motivation.

Career stages are not always related to milestones professional development. A person who is at the stage of advancement within another profession may not yet be a high professional. Therefore, it is important to separate the career stage - the time period of personal development and the professional development phase - periods of mastery of activity.

In accordance with the phases of development of a professional, there are:

Optant (option phase). A person is concerned about choosing or being forced to change a profession and makes this choice. There cannot be exact chronological boundaries here, as in relation to other phases, since age characteristics are set not only by physiological, but also by multidimensional cultural conditions;

Adept (adept phase). This is a person who has already taken the path of commitment to the profession and is mastering it. Depending on the profession, this can be a long-term or very short-term process (for example, simple instruction);

Adapter (phase of adaptation, getting a young specialist accustomed to work). No matter how the process of training a particular professional in educational institution, he never fits “like a key to a lock” to production work;

Internal (internal phase). An experienced worker who loves his job and can independently, more and more reliably and successfully cope with basic professional functions, which is recognized by colleagues at work and in the profession;

Master (ongoing mastery phase). An employee can solve both simple and the most difficult professional tasks, which, perhaps, not all colleagues can handle;

Authority (the authority phase, like the mastery phase, is also summed up with the next one). A master of his craft, already well known in the professional circle or even outside it (in the industry, in the country). Depending on the forms of employee certification accepted in a given profession, he has certain high formal qualification indicators;

Mentor (mentoring phase). An authoritative master of his craft in any profession “grows” with like-minded people, adopters of experience, and students.

Career planning is one of the areas personnel work in an organization, focused on determining the strategy, stages of development and promotion of specialists. This is the process of comparing a person’s potential capabilities, abilities and goals with the requirements of the organization, strategy and plans for its development, expressed in drawing up a program for professional and job growth.

List of professional and job requirements, which records the optimal development of a professional to occupy a certain position in an organization, is a career chart, a formalized idea of what path a specialist must take in order to get necessary knowledge and acquire the necessary skills for efficient work at a specific place.

Career planning in an organization can be carried out by: the HR manager, the employee himself, his immediate supervisor (line manager). The main career planning activities specific to different planning subjects are presented in Table. 9.

Table 9

Specifics of career planning activities

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Career promotion is determined, as a rule, not only by the employee’s personal qualities (education, qualifications, attitude to work, system internal motivations), but also objective conditions. Among the most important objective characteristics of a career are:

The career high point is the highest position existing in the particular organization in question;

Career length - the number of positions along the path from the first position occupied by an individual in an organization to the highest point;

The position level indicator is the ratio of the number of persons employed at the next hierarchical level to the number of persons employed at the hierarchical level where the individual is located at a given moment in his career;

The indicator of potential mobility is the ratio (in a certain period of time) of the number of vacancies at the next hierarchical level to the number of persons employed at the hierarchical level where the individual is located.

Depending on the objective conditions, an intra-organizational career can be promising or a dead end - an employee can have either a long career path or a very short one. The HR manager, already when accepting a candidate, must design a possible career and discuss it with the candidate, based on individual characteristics and specifics of motivation. The same career path for different employees can be both attractive and uninteresting, which will significantly affect the effectiveness of their future activities.

Almost every person faces such a problem in his life as choosing a career. At the same time, everyone strives to achieve certain successes in life: to conquer some peaks, achieve the best results, strive for excellence and professionalism in any area and, of course, receive satisfaction from work.

Choosing a profession is a very important decision, since mistakes along the way can lead to the most negative results. The choice of profession itself depends only on the person personally, so you need to have an idea of your own inclinations and abilities, as well as existing professions. In order to beat competitors in the labor market and get an interesting job that a person will successfully cope with, it is not enough to have an irresistible desire to get it - you must have certain qualities and personal characteristics, special knowledge, good education and correctly navigate a specific situation. And it is necessary to remember that the main thing in work is not only earnings, but also the pleasure received from it.

Choosing a career is one of the most important decisions that a person makes in his life, since a person's achievements in a particular field of activity depend on the fit between his personality and the nature of his work, as well as on the combination of personal expectations in the field of personal career with the capabilities of the organization .

The labor market is tight competitive fight between those wishing to take the most “profitable” workplace. In such conditions, achieving career goals is impossible without a timely developed strategic plan. This is especially significant at the initial stage of job search, where you can use your professional abilities.

Each person prioritizes several guidelines that “set the tone” for the entire career strategy. When people are aware of the factors that influence or “stick” them to a particular career path, it becomes possible to conduct the most effective search for work that is meaningful to them. In order to build (choose) a career correctly, you need to correctly assess your potential and personal qualities.

We must not be afraid to reveal our strengths and weak sides. Strengths include: level of education, skills and abilities, experience, physical characteristics; all these aspects are under the control of the person himself. Weaknesses include negative aspects vocational training(which can be eliminated), self-doubt, reluctance to work.

Having the ability to self-assess, a person himself is better than others able to understand his strengths and weaknesses. Therefore, he can make the most effective decision to increase his chances of success. It is not wise to plan for something that is unlikely to be achieved.

To assess personality characteristics and optimize the choice of field of professional activity at the beginning of a professional path, it is important to take into account the personality type of the person choosing the field of activity. HR consultant J. Holland argues that a person's personality (values, motives and needs) is one of important factors career choice. He determined that there are six basic personality orientations that determine the types of careers to which people are most inclined. Based on research using his vocational test, J. Holland identified the following main individual orientations (Fig. 6, Table 10):

1. Realistic orientation. People with this orientation tend to engage in occupations involving manual labor that require skill, strength, and coordination: forestry, farming, and agriculture.

2. Research orientation. These people tend to pursue careers that involve introverted activities (thinking, organizing, interpreting) rather than affective ones (feeling, interpersonal communication, and emotions): biologists, chemists, teachers.

3. Artistic orientation. Here people tend to pursue careers that require self-expression, artistic creation, expression of emotion and individuality: artists, musicians, advertising creators.

4. Social orientation. These people are inclined towards careers that involve interpersonal rather than intellectual or physical interaction: diplomatic service, social work.

5. Entrepreneurial orientation. These people are prone to careers that involve verbal activity associated with influencing others: managers, lawyers.

6. Conventional orientation. These people prefer careers that provide structured, regulated activities, as well as professions that require subordinates to balance their personal needs with organizational ones: accountants, financiers.

Rice. 6. Typology of personalities by J. Holland

Most people have multiple orientations, and Holland believes that the more similar or compatible these orientations are, the less internal conflict there is and the easier it is to make career decisions.

According to Holland's research, the two closest orientations in the diagram correspond to the most compatible. Holland believes that if a person has two orientations side by side, he will have less problems choosing a career. However, if the orientations turn out to be opposite (for example, realistic and social), a person may have more uncertainty when choosing a career and further work, because his interests involve Various types careers.

Table 10

Summary table of J. Holland's personality typology

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Although, according to Holland's concept, one type of personality orientation is always dominant, a person can adapt to conditions using strategies of two or more types. The closer the sectors of the circle of the dominant and second (third) orientation, the more holistic the personality. Taking into account the content of dominant and non-dominant orientations, one can choose those types of activities that are closer to a person and in which he will be more successful. If the dominant and subsequent orientations are far from each other, choosing a career is more difficult.

Another typology that can be used for career selection purposes is the typology of E.L. Klimova. The methodology he proposed helps to choose a professional career based on those skills and abilities from the implementation of which a person receives the greatest satisfaction, which is the most important prerequisite for increasing labor productivity, a reliable guarantee against various errors and omissions. All types of activities are divided here by subject of labor:

Type P - “man - nature”, if the main, leading subject of labor is plants, animals, microorganisms.

Type T - “man - technology”, if the main, leading subject of labor is technical systems, material objects, materials, types of energy.

Type H - “person - person”, if the main, leading subject of labor is people, groups, teams, communities of people.

Type Z - “man - sign”, if the main, leading subject of work is conventional signs, numbers, codes, natural or artificial languages.

Type X - “person - artistic image”, if the main, leading subject of work is artistic images, the conditions for their construction.

An HR manager, as a rule, is faced with a person who already has a profession, but it is important to know how the person made his choice. The following main situations for choosing a profession can be distinguished:

Tradition - the question of choice did not arise due to tradition and customs;

Chance - the choice occurred by chance, due to some event;

Debt - the choice of profession is associated with the idea of \u200b\u200bduty, about one’s mission, calling or obligations to people;

Target choice - choice is associated with the conscious determination of the goals of professional activity, based on the analysis of real problems and ways to solve them (before the moment of choice, it is already known about future professional activity).

How is career path selection usually done in practice? If you have not decided from the very beginning (say, during your university studies) what your professional path will be, then one of the most important decisions you will have to make in your life will be the decision to choose a type of activity. If you have thought about this question seriously enough, then by the time you make your final choice you have several ideas in your head, which, however, still need to be clarified. You can make the necessary inquiries from a number of sources of knowledge and experience. One of these sources is your connections.

During the transition to work, you have at your disposal:

Home and family connections;

Connections that may have been established through sports and hobbies;

Numerous contacts, which in the future can become the basis of your professional connections (contacts with university teachers, people with whom and for whom you worked during your studies, on vacation, etc.).

All of these possible contacts are needed in order to find someone who has practical experience in the type of activity that you are considering as your possible professional career. For example, if you are thinking about a career as an accountant, then you need to find among the connections at your disposal a person who could tell you what such a job promises in principle. If you don’t know such a specialist, then you need to use the contacts at your disposal to find a competent person.

However, when using connections as a source of advice when choosing a career, you expose yourself to considerable danger, since any advice you receive from your contacts about a future career should be assessed soberly, taking into account the emotional aspect present in the words of the adviser. It is better to find out the opinions of several people and find out where their assessments converge. Compare the general things that were expressed by your friends with information from other sources. The method of seeking advice by activating the connections at your disposal will also come in handy when you have to solve the next big problem - finding your first job.

In market conditions, achieving average results is usually valued low. The same rule applies in professional activities. Therefore, you need to achieve outstanding success in those areas that management and customers believe are most important. The secret of professional success is to create a reputation for yourself as a highly qualified specialist in the business in which you are directly involved, regardless of whether you work in government agency or have your own business. You can always make a significant contribution to the success of your company through the intensity and quality of your work, and stand out noticeably from the crowd of other employees.

Create your own brand

Identity politics, or brand creation - trademark, which is called the basis of all marketing theories, pays special attention to the identity and individuality of a particular person. A brand serves as a sign of originality and identity that distinguishes a product or person from the world around it. We all know the individual famous brands. Their identity is usually deeply rooted in the minds of consumers. In some cases, the influence of a trademark is so strong that it is used as a synonym for the name of the corresponding product, as happened, for example, with diapers.

Sometimes we think about some famous person whose identity is expressed very clearly. You can achieve the same success. To do this, you need to be considered an outstanding, irreplaceable employee in your company who does his job skillfully and contributes significant contribution to the prosperity of the company. In marketing parlance, this is called internal identity politics. An employee who has his own identity makes outstanding progress while simultaneously focusing his work on strengthening the identity of the entire enterprise. Increasing the level of identity of individual employees of an enterprise has a powerful impact on the popularity of the products and services offered by the enterprise in the market.

What is a private label? Any proper name is already a brand. Every person has a name. Every person acts, thinks and reacts to something, both socially and privacy. Moreover, his actions, thoughts and reactions can be both positive and negative. If you want to achieve success in life, then you should look at yourself as an unchangeable brand product and build your behavior in accordance with this. In order to create your own brand, you need to take six steps in succession.

First. Find out everything related to the operation of your enterprise. One of the intermediate goals should be to obtain maximum information about the identity of the enterprise’s brand, its meaning and mission in the market for goods and services. You should find out whether the company is respected by customers, suppliers, competitors and employees. You need to understand what makes the enterprise unique and how it fundamentally differs from other organizations of the same profile.

Second. Assess the attitude towards you on the part of the enterprise personnel. Examine in detail your own contribution to the work of the enterprise and take a closer look at how other employees treat you. Ask others how they would tell a third party about you. Does the data obtained meet your expectations? Find out what others think about your recent successes, especially paying attention to constructive criticism.

Third. Define your own brand identity. Examine your life style, the times during which you have changed, the cultural environment and society in which you moved and move, your work and the attitude of other people towards you at different periods of your life when, as it seems to you, you took the most high bar. After an impartial examination of your personality, you should have an idea of who you really are, what you want, how you are different from others, and what you feel inclined to do. Try to summarize everything you have come to in the course of your reasoning and make a short summary about your identity.

Fourth. Make a list of tasks. Make a chronological list of the tasks you have completed that were highly rated by management and that you consider most successful. Focus on those tasks that make you stand out from the crowd. Figure out what was the secret to the success of these tasks, activate yourself, don’t expect that interesting projects will fall on you themselves. Try to search for and develop them yourself, without hoping for a lucky break. Understand that projects developed by you personally will contribute to the creation and strengthening of your identity.

Fifth. Promise yourself to stay true to your brand. The sum of the concepts and qualities that define your identity represents the promise that you must make your “article of faith.” All future actions should reinforce your identity.

Sixth. Tell everyone about your “creed.” When you have finally found your promise, share it with those around you. Tell us about it inside the enterprise and outside its walls. Don't think this is about shameless self-promotion. No, you just let others know what you can do and what abilities and skills you have.

Only after you have given up misunderstood modesty and faith in blind chance in your professional life and begin to work consistently, from morning to evening, to create your own identity, will you have a chance to achieve the desired position within the enterprise.

To find your brand, do this:

Find out what policy your company pursues to create its own brand;

Learn to look at yourself through the eyes of other people;

Define your own identity;

Make a list of projects that match your identity and that you would be willing to implement;

Make a written promise to yourself to direct all your future actions towards strengthening your identity.

The result will certainly be a successful career.

Correct positioning

If someone's name is associated with outstanding success, broad competence and therefore becomes famous, the marketing value of its owner increases. After all, any name, whether we are talking about an individual, a company or social group, becomes a brand. The extent to which a given name becomes entrenched in the memory of the target group depends on what this person or this group of people do this. The secret of the strengths of any brand lies, firstly, in the correct positioning, and secondly, in the ability to influence the consumer’s decision and his readiness to make a purchase.

A successful branding program (positioning) develops a certain concept, which is then forever established in the minds of the target group as unchanged and original. This applies equally to products and services and to the individual.

First of all, it is necessary to find the right niche for correct positioning, bearing in mind that it, in a slightly modified form, uses the same methods that are used in modern advertising. Each person can develop their own positioning strategy in order to present a product, service, business, organization or, ultimately, themselves in the best light.

Proper positioning implies that the promoted product lingers and remains in the minds of the target group. At the same time, there are three opportunities to engage in your own positioning, while at the same time refusing to compete:

- “optically” change yourself or your products;

Give it a new or additional meaning;

Provide more wide profile use of products.

When a buyer finds himself in a situation of choosing between products, he begins to look for any distinctive features in them. The product must have such features that, as a result of the purchase, give the buyer the feeling that he has made the best purchase possible. You can change your positioning for the better by making virtual or actual changes in its quality. Virtual changes imply that a person, using certain methods, creates in the minds of the target group a new vision of his personality or his products. A new positioning, created through virtual rather than actual changes, usually differs from the previous one in greater originality and originality. Often, for a new positioning it is enough to change the packaging, price, name, etc.

Actual or qualitative changes mean an actual change or at least a fundamental improvement in the product.

Compared to positioning achieved through actual changes, virtual positioning tends to have a stronger impact and hold more firmly in people's minds. There are many examples that show that faith and conviction in the quality of a particular product are much stronger than bare reality.

A positioning strategy is not necessarily based on constantly creating something new and special. Rather, it connects and connects existing thoughts, gives them a certain form and provokes new associations. Try, without resorting to actual innovation, to find a different positioning for what distinguishes you.

Thanks to the vast experience gained through numerous studies marketing strategies and intensive consulting, German expert Petr Savchenko found that many enterprises have a number of memorable distinctive qualities, which do not correspond to the outside world and exist, as it were, secretly from the consumer. Therefore, you need to behave in such a way that the target group thinks positively about you and remembers you with gratitude and satisfaction from time to time. Beware of poor communication.

According to experts, knowledge nowadays is updated every two years. And the world is changing almost before our eyes. The education received today is no longer “education for life” and does not guarantee a successful career. Its only guarantee is “lifelong education.” This is natural: if knowledge quickly becomes outdated, it means that it needs to be updated even faster in order to achieve success in one’s professional activities. One of the ways to update existing knowledge and acquire new ones is precisely self-education.

If education can be characterized as the process of acquiring systematic knowledge and a specific way of thinking, then experts define self-education as education through correspondence courses with full self-control. Today, many people seeking to achieve career success study independently, while mastering short time a colossal amount of information. The ability to learn helps them in this - the main skill necessary for a person engaged in self-education. It manifests itself:

In the ability to make decisions regarding one’s own learning process, developed self-motivation;

IN correct use basic techniques of mental activity and intellectual strategies (mental, logical, etc.) in relation to the subjects being studied, developed skills in organizing one’s own time, the ability to plan and control one’s activities;

The ability to find the necessary information and choose appropriate methods for studying it;

In communication skills - the ability to make acquaintances, plan communications with people you are interested in, and cooperate with them.

Self-education, in principle, can be of two types: systematic and situational, when knowledge and skills are acquired as the need for them arises. Special meaning has a systematic education, since only it helps to improve a person’s professional level and leads to career success. The most important thing in this process is to involve everyone external resources, engage in self-education using various sources.

The main and traditional source is books and tools mass media. In principle, a lesson based on books - tutorials, textbooks, textbooks and so on. - This is a classic way of self-education. Today you can easily find the necessary literature on any topic. There are also quite a lot of media today, however, they are heterogeneous in the level and quality of the material presented. Therefore, it is necessary to be critical of the materials published in them, especially new and unusual ones.

With development global network the Internet has appeared as a new source for self-education - the opportunity to use electronic libraries and study materials from various sites. Distance self-education via the Internet is also developing. Another source of self-education is special training computer programs. Many of them are generally provided free of charge along with the corresponding software. Computers, of course, are not in every home today, but it is quite possible to use an office one in your free time from work. This will only increase your attractiveness in the eyes of management.

Attending various conferences, seminars and exhibitions is another very useful and, most importantly, very interesting source of self-education. Participation in such events allows you to always keep abreast of events, learn in time about new directions, ideas and developments that modern scientists and researchers are engaged in.

Another important source of self-education that people often forget about is the reality around us. The events that happen around us and the people we meet and interact with can enrich our knowledge as much, and sometimes even more, than other sources. The main thing is to be able to see and hear, and also to understand that you can learn something from any person.

Speaking about the surrounding reality, experts, first of all, advise remembering the importance of perceiving any information that comes into your field of vision. They recommend learning to transform it into the most useful one for yourself, “passing it” through your professional prism, and also always asking yourself what this information may be useful in your future activities. Sources of self-education also include all kinds of hobbies and hobbies. Especially if they are directly or indirectly related to professional activity person.

In any case, in the process of self-education it is necessary to use all of the above sources, without forgetting any of them and combining them optimally. Only in this case will this process be effective.

Experts say that everyone who has achieved significant success in their activities, regardless of its type, has been engaged in self-education a lot. They associate this not only with the acquisition of new knowledge, but also with the fact that this type of education develops skills in creative comprehension of reality and the ability to independently analyze various information, events and phenomena. A person has to overcome the unknown, so he develops independence and independence of thinking, and perseverance in overcoming difficulties that arise. In addition, it has long been known that nothing is assimilated as well as what is obtained through one’s own labor.