Comments on: My Top Ten Career Management Tips for 2008

By: Amber P.

Amber P. — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 20:18:01 +0000

I particularly like #3, or as Steve Johnson at Pragmatic Marketing would say “Your opinion, while interesting, is irrelevant”.

You gave some good advice to a colleague who recently shared it with me: Never go back in your career, always move forward.
Another good one for the list!

By: Nick Harris

Nick Harris — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 23:03:13 +0000

Number one resonates particularly well with me. As a young professional early in his career I can confirm that getting to know the Irene’s at a company can really accelerate one’s onboarding process and growth path. For this reason I feel that it is extremely important for organizations to foster a mentoring environment, especially when they employ Gen Y kids like myself, who generally seek out and appreciate closer relationships with managers and co-workers.

By: Jack Ferres

Jack Ferres — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 16:35:39 +0000

“Just Ask”… and “Just Do It” are two that I particularly like, and together can cover a lot of ground.

If you believe, as I do, that people genuinely want to be helpful, then you may also agree that “just asking” may just be giving others an opportunity to exercise their preference. Of course this can be taken way too far to the point of greed. But I’m thinking more along the lines of a small child asking a grandmother to help put his/her mittens on (relevant story, given the snow Boston received last night and the forecast for the next day). Or in the work world, imagine the bond of trust you would be building by asking a colleague for their opinion on a strategic proposal, for instance.

I like “just do it”, for lots of reasons, among them if you agree that you can learn by your mistakes, then there is value in either path you take. But to delay can often mean either the moment has passed, or someone else will claim the reward. Having just spent a week in the automotive capital (Detroit), I’ll illustrate my point with the example of Chrysler, who very successfully morphed their acquired Jeep brand and gave birth to the now ever popular SUV. While many of the other automotive makers had contemplated evolutions of the Jeep style, none took it on until well after Chrysler had enjoyed years of first-to-market success. On a more individual level, when have you ever been disappointed to see someone take the initiative to “just do it”? I would even go so far as to say being witness to someone else’s initiative, is in itself, self-inspiring.

By: Ken Savage

Ken Savage — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 17:28:29 +0000

I would say always try to provide benefit to the people you work for. Being layed off many times over the last few years has taught me to work extra hard and provide value to my co-workers.

By: Kim K.

Kim K. — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 17:23:40 +0000

I’ll agree with you about email not being the best form of communication. Instant messaging is even worse. What happened to the handshake days of business, right?

Another I would add is:

Clicking “Send” too fast. Reread every e-mail before you send it! I actually get e-mails from job applicants with misspellings and missing words. They all go to the same place: the garbage. This is a pet peeve. I’m not going to hire someone who is careless.Even if you’re not looking for a job, you want to be careful.

People will judge you subconsciously on mistakes. None of us is perfect. But you can catch 99% of these problems by rereading the text.And don’t depend on the spell-checker. It will catch misspellings. But if you use “four” instead of “for,” or “your” for “you’re,” it won’t tell you.

It also is not likely to catch any missing words in a sentence that you inadvertently failed to include. So take a minute and reread your text.