Your source for authentic and practical career advice
Posts that are more useful to working professionals
Many of you would have had your performance review 1-1 recently, and most likely you are disappointed about how it went. There are many reasons why you would be disappointed right now, I talked about it in my post last year about this - Performance Review - The Day After. If you want to … Continue reading What do you focus on – activities or results?
It has been a while since I posted here. I have been extremely busy with lots of interesting things happening with me, and I am enjoying my unemployment thoroughly. I have met lots of interesting people over last few months, including a large number of working professionals who are trying to make changes to their … Continue reading News Review: Engagement and Retention challenges
In the last post on Career Stages, I described a few key attributes for evaluating career progression that organizations and/or individuals need to take care of if they want to effectively manage the career, esp. of their senior employees. Low engagement level, 'through others' contribution mode, and # of real working hours are key points … Continue reading Why do we work – when organizations care about careers
In my previous post on 'Why do we work', I talked about 4 levels of employees from the perspective of career and motivational stages: Entry Level Employees, Senior employees/frontline managers, Middle Managers, and executives. They differ in terms of how they manage their career and what motivates them to give their best to the organization. … Continue reading Why do we work – career stages and attributes
I have been talking to many working professionals over past few weeks about their need to work and what they seek from work. This post (and the next one) summarizes my observations and theory around what I hear. From a career and motivation perspective, there are 4 levels of employees in an organization: Entry Level … Continue reading Why do we work – Career vs. Needs Hierarchy
Why do some individuals always try to do their best in a situation, while others don't? At work, why do some people bemoan their work, and still do an outstanding job, while others seem happy with their work, and still produce mediocre results? In my experience, this can be traced to one of the important … Continue reading Personal Excellence
You were a management understudy and had a report (or 2) to test your management abilities. Now your manager thinks you are now ready to be a manager and you now have 5 reports. Congratulations! Once celebrations are over, you start thinking: is this going to be any different than before? Do my strategies for … Continue reading New Managers: moving from 1 report to 5 reports effectively
When I received my first performance review in as an individual contributor last month, after having been a manager for 7 years before that, it was revealing, to say the least. This prompted me to talk to a few other individual contributors I knew in the company, these discussions were very insightful. I also reviewed … Continue reading Career Paths for engineers – Being a Phase 2 IC
I have been talking to a friend who has impeccable credentials as far as resume of an Indian engineer goes: IIT + IIM, about 15 years of work experience working in various big and small software companies in US. Such a resume attracts amazing amount of offers at incredible salary points. However, my conversations with … Continue reading Is your manager killing your career aspiration?
It is obviously true that success will bring happiness, any kind of success will. However, is the reverse true – will happiness bring success? There is lots of research available that suggest that happiness indeed brings success. Here are a few references: Happiness brings success, not the other way round' (the paper) - Scientists reviewed … Continue reading Happiness and Career Success
Career Bloom 