Setting and Achieving Career Goals

Setting and Achieving Career Goals In the article, Turn the Job You Have into the Job You Want (Wrzesniewski, Berg, Dutton, 2010) the authors contend that the recession is forcing more employees to stay in their current positions rather than move forward with their careers. This is occurring due to the compound effects of employers not wanting to risk hiring new workers while at the same time, employees do not want to risk entering an uncertain new job situation. Both combine to stifle the growth and eventually the initiative of employees.

To overcome this impasse, each person needs to take responsibility for their own career advancement by concentrating on growing their skill sets, educational, training and experience levels to progress their careers when an opportunity eventually is available. The gist of the article is that career development can never be just a part-time effort; it needs to be an integral part of any career strategy. Second, career development is as much about who much someone knows as it is about how they relate and get along with others.

The authors are careful to point out that balance in how a person gets along with their workers can mean even more than what they know. The point is made that the longevity of employment is increasing due to the lack of new opportunities opening up in other companies, and as a result, alliances are more critical than ever to grow and maintain over time (Wrzesniewski, Berg, Dutton, 2010).

The authors show through examples why this is more important than ever, and how social networks are making the reputation a person achieves in one company rapidly spread across an entire industry (Wrzesniewski, Berg, Dutton, 2010). This point is made to illustrate why the focus on social skills is surpassing technical skills as the priority for many in how they manage their careers.

The authors also are careful to point out how critical it is for someone to find what areas of their work they are the most passionate about, and seek to align their jobs with those areas of the greatest interest. At the intersection of innate interest on the one hand and talent on the other, the authors have seen exceptional career growth in a very short period of time (Wrzesniewski, Berg, Dutton, 2010).

This strategy is shown in the article and also underscored by how critical it is to stay focused not on just a career but on a personal development agenda as well. When an employee has been able to align their personal interests with those of their roles in an organization, quantum jumps in performance are commonplace (Wrzesniewski, Berg, Dutton, 2010). The authors also found that employees who were reaching this level of expertise were getting industry recognition as well, which led to their eventually being able to move.