Career Moves

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It’s great reading about all the things you should be doing to move your career in the right direction… but every now and then it can be useful to look at the flip side too. Finding the right job can take months, working your way up the career ladder takes years… but get things wrong and you’ll find sliding down that same ladder can happen much more quickly.

To avoid that, it’s important to stay aware of, and to steer a course around the many pitfalls that can trip you as you progress down your chosen career path. Keeping an eye on some of the main workplace faux pas, and actively working to avoid them, can help you to keep our career on track through challenging times.

• Lone ranger: being self confident and self reliant are positive traits, but beware of crossing the line into arrogance and alienating your co-workers. Being a team player is every bit as important as excelling in your discipline. It’s the performance of the team, and ultimately the business, rather than the individual, that counts. If your personal brilliance disrupts that team environment, and results in a negative impact on team performance, you won’t last long, no matter how good you are.
• Poor People Skills: it’s important to make a conscious effort to be affable and get on with people at work. Studies by respected bodies like the Harvard Business Review show that people prefer to work with likeable, less-skilled individuals than with highly competent but less friendly co-workers. According to researchers if an employee is generally disliked, it almost doesn’t matter that they’re good at what they do, because other people won’t work effectively with them.
• Personal business at work: strictly speaking company e-mail and company phones should be reserved for company business. A few short personal phone calls is obviously OK, but limit their number and keep them brief. Similarly with e-mail, try to avoid using your business account for personal e-mail, never type anything in a business e-mail that you wouldn’t want your boss to read and steer clear of distributing chain-letters and jokes to company mailing lists.
• Missing deadlines: if you commit to meeting a particular deadline, you need to make sure you meet it. Missing deadlines is unprofessional, has a knock-on impact on other people’s schedules and makes your boss look bad… which is never a good career move. Live by the maxim of "under-promise and over-deliver". That said, occasionally changing circumstances will mean you’re never going to make a deadline. In that case make sure you communicate effectively: tell everyone it’s likely to affect that you’re going to miss the deadline, and why, and let them know when you’ll get the work finished.
• Isolation: being isolated makes you less effective. Work to develop your relationships within your organisation and your profession. Effective networking will give you the inside track when it comes to getting information and securing the resources you need to do your job efficiently.

With companies looking to cut costs (which often means jobs) at every opportunity, how you’re perceived at work, and making a positive impression is more important than ever. Check back next week for another five pitfalls to look out for.

Don’t forget to check out 10 Potentially Fatal Career Traits – Part 2.

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