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Career Advancement – Audio

Hi, welcome to this month’s VIP lesson, our topic… Career Advancement.

This is a big topic for many, many people. Anyone who has a job or wants a job and especially anyone who wants a better job, a better position needs to know how to advance, how to improve in their career.

Let’s talk about the difference between a job and a career.

A job is just one particular position that you have now, whatever you’re doing. But a career is a series of jobs over your lifetime and most of us who are working, hope that over our lifetime that our jobs, our positions will get better and better and better.

What does better mean? Well, everyone has a different idea of what a better job is. Most of us agree that more money is nice, so most of us hope that we will make more and more and more money through our life. But another way to think of a better job is a job that’s more enjoyable, that has more freedom, that has more interesting responsibilities, that has more status, for some people. So it’s really up to you to decide in your life what kinds of jobs do you want now and in the future.

Of course, the truth is that in the moment right now, sometimes we take jobs that we don’t like, that we don’t enjoy or maybe we even enjoy the job but we don’t want to be in the same job forever. We have to eat. We have to pay our bills, so that’s necessary. But for our career longterm we need to plan, to think ahead and too many people get stuck in jobs they don’t like, because they don’t think ahead. They’re not thinking of, what’s the next step? What’s the next step that I want? Or, they want something better, they can imagine it but they don’t know how to get it.

This month I’m going to teach you how to do that.

Many years ago when I first was in graduate school studying social work, this is before I was an English teacher. My first career was as a social worker. I went to school to get my Master’s degree in social work. While I was in school I got an internship, which was unpaid, no money.

So for five months, one semester I worked for free at a youth shelter. This was a place that helped young people who were having problems, maybe they ran away from home, ran away from their parents. Maybe their parents had abused them. Maybe they had drug problems, many different situations.

While I was in school I realized that I would graduate and that after graduation I wanted a job. I specifically wanted a job at this youth shelter, that’s why I got the internship there, because I liked the organization. I liked the people who worked there. I liked the boss there and I knew that I wanted that position, a paid position with them. So I was thinking ahead. That’s the first step, think ahead.

I showed up and I was there, it was me but there were several other interns also. This was a fairly large organization and they had three or four interns total, so it wasn’t just me. Let me tell you what the other interns did first. What most interns do is they’re passive, so the interns came to work and then they sat around and waited to be told what to do. So they sat around and waited for the director or one of the full-time staff, full-time counselors, social workers to tell them they needed help, to tell them what to do, to give them a task. So most of the time they were kind of sitting around waiting for something to happen.

Another thing I noticed about the other interns is that they frequently complained so they would not only sit around waiting to be told what to do, but they would often sit around and complain about different things. Maybe there were complaining about school and their classes or complaining about something happening at their internship. They never seemed to offer any kind of solutions they just kind of complained and complained and sat around.

I did something very different. I realized that I wanted to work there. I wanted to get a job offer from that place. I liked the place, it was very flexible. I loved the people there, so I thought I gotta get a job here, this is my perfect place to work. But I also knew they probably would only have one position available and there were three other interns I was competing with, plus whoever else might apply for the job also. I knew I had to make myself stand out in a very positive way.

What I did is, I decided to just act like I already had the job. In other words, act like I was already a staff member, act like I was already being paid, act like I was already in the position that I wanted, already a full-time counselor.

1. The first thing I did was I watched the other full-time counselors.

I watched what they did. I watched how they dressed. I noticed how they dressed, what kind of clothes they wore. I noticed how they talked to each other. I noticed all the different jobs and tasks they did. I noticed in our staff meetings what they would talk about.

1. Step two, once I had a good feeling of what their job was like, I went up to each one of them and asked them if I could help them.

I said can I go with you? Maybe they were doing, for example, group counseling. They would go to the schools and meet with four or five kids who were having problems in the schools and talk to them and try to help the kids solve their problems. So I asked the counselors, can I come with you and watch you so I can learn more about your job? I can help you if you need help, I’ll do anything. That’s what I did, I started going along with all these different counselors going to their groups. I would help them with anything. I would make copies of papers for them or help them with paperwork, whatever they needed I would help them.

Here’s what happened, after a few weeks I started learning their job very well and then I started to participate a little bit in the groups. They started to trust me. The counselors trusted me, I was being very helpful to them. I was learning everything I could so they let me join in with the group so I could try to help the kids a little bit too. I also tried to dress a little bit nicer than the interns. A lot of the interns were college kids, who were just wearing t-shirts and jeans or stuff like that, but I tried to dress like the counselors dressed. Counselors don’t wear suits and things like that, but they do dress a little nicer, so I started doing that a little bit too. Again, so I would look just like them.

As the internship went forward after some more time, I started to become very comfortable. I started to understand their job very well and I was learning a lot of things. So eventually, I knew what problems they had. I knew what problems the organization had. Then I started to offer my ideas, to offer my solutions. For example, I knew they wanted to expand the programs in the schools, but they didn’t have enough money, so I helped to write a proposal to get more money to pay for one more counselor, so they could expand their programs.

Nobody asked me to do this, I volunteered to do this. It was my idea to do it and then I did the work to do it. I started doing this more and more in the meetings with the individual counselors, with the director, offering my suggestions. Sometimes they didn’t like my suggestions or my suggestions weren’t so good, but sometimes they were and they appreciated my ideas.

In short, what happened is eventually my proposal that I wrote was approved. We went it off to a foundation and they approved it and gave this organization more money to expand their programs. So guess what happened at the end of the internship? I was offered a job and I indeed ended up working there for a few years. It was one of the best jobs of my life, certainly the best job I ever had as a social worker. It was a great experience. So I moved from intern to full-time staff at exactly the place I wanted. I got exactly the position I wanted.

Let’s talk about some of the things I did, that you can do in your own career.

• Step one, the first thing I did was observe.

You have to think about what the next position is that you want. Too many of us focus only on the job we have right now and we’re so worried about the problems in the job we have now, the things we don’t like, maybe the things we do like. We never think about what’s the next one or we don’t think much about it. That’s the one we should really be thinking about, where do we want to be next? Got to answer that question first.

What’s the next position you want? Maybe it’s at the company you’re at now, maybe it’s at a different company. If you’re young and it’s your first job or if you’re changing careers, then it might be at a completely different field. But you have to decide first, what is the position you want and then observe, observe, observe other people in that same position. I was an intern so I observed the full-time counselors, because that’s the job I wanted next.

You can do the same. If you already work around those people than it’s easy, just watch them.

If they’re already in your office, look at the people working the job you want. Notice what they do. Even better, interview them. Take them to lunch, you pay and just ask them questions about their job. Don’t ask them for a job. Don’t try to get a job from them, that’s obnoxious and people don’t like that because it feels like pressure. Be clear, tell them, I’m actually interested in the job you do and the kind of work you do and I want to learn more about it, can I take you to lunch and just ask you some questions about what you do? Most people will be happy to do that.

When you go to lunch do exactly that, ask them about their job and what they do. What are their main responsibilities? What are the most important skills for this position? What are the biggest problems that you face in this position? Get as many details as you can about that position that you want.

• The next step is to volunteer and to help out.

That’s where, like I did, you contact people in that position and you volunteer for no pay to help them out. If they’re in your same company it’s easier, you can just go to them and say look, I want to learn more about your position, so in my extra time, in my free time, I would like to help you any way I can, for no money, no pay, maybe I can go along and watch to see what you do.

I’m happy to do any kind of job, even making copies or whatever. If you don’t have someone like that at your current company, you might have to do it on the weekends. You might have to do it in your free time, but you need to do it. You need to be around those people that are in your next job and you need to actually see what they do and start helping them out.

• Step three, learn skills and solve problems.

Once you get a feeling for the position that you want, once you’re around those people you know what’s involved. You know what needs to happen and you know the problems there are.

The next thing is to start thinking of ways to be more helpful. Start thinking of ways to solve their problems for them, to help them solve their problems. Then tell them your ideas, or if you can just do it on your own, do it on your own and solve some of their problems, even if they’re just tiny little problems, do that.

As I mentioned, for the counselors sometimes they needed to make copies of paperwork and they were very busy so I helped solve that problem, I would make copies for them. That was a big help to them, they liked it and it created a good relationship with them. As you learn more and more, as you volunteer more and more, you can solve bigger problems and make better suggestions. Also, as you’re watching these people and volunteering you need to see what skills you need, what new skills do you need, because you might need to make some improvements?

In that social work position I realized I needed to learn how to be a good counselor, how to talk to teenagers and help them solve their problems. I watched how the good counselors did it and I took lots of nots. Then I practiced doing it myself so that I got better and better, so that my counseling skills improved. You’ll need to do this too. You’ll need to develop certain new skills so that you can do that new job, get to that new position and perform well.

• Finally, number four, you want to talk, look, dress and act like the people in your new position.

So if in your current job you wear casual clothes, but in the job you want people wear suits, start wearing suits to your work. Start wearing suits. You want to look, not like your current job but look like the next job that you want.

I remember I worked at IBM one time, again just an intern, a college student working there. But I worked at IBM and I remember in the department there were a lot of people, a lot of people working in this video department, but there was one guy in the department that always wore a very nice suit. Everybody else dressed casually, because it was the video department, so everybody acted more casual like they were artists, they’re doing videos, so they thought of themselves more of artists. They dressed quite casually, but one of the directors always dressed very nicely in a suit and tie.

Guess what? He’s the one that got promoted into a management position and went higher. It wasn’t an accident. He wanted to get to that next position. He wanted to go up into a management position so he dressed like a manager, not like all the other directors. So you have to decide that, it could even work the opposite I don’t know. It’s possible you could be in a position where right now you’re wearing a suit, but in your next job you might dress a little more casually, more relaxed, more artistically, more creatively. You might need to start being more creative in your dress.

The point is, look like your next job. Look like the other people who are in the position that you want. Talk like them. Learn how they talk. Every position has its own vocabulary. We call it jargon, special vocabulary just for that job or position. Learn it. Use it so that all those people start to see you as one of them, that’s the key thing and what will eventually make your career get better. That’s how you’ll get the next position. When everyone else that’s there looks at you and thinks ah, you are like them. You are one of them.

That’s what happened in the social work position, all the other counselors started to look at me as a counselor, not an intern. They started to treat me and see me as a counselor, another staff member, not just as a student. So when it was time and they got the new position open, I was the first choice. You can do that too.

By doing this you’ll naturally become one of them and eventually they will ask you to join them and then, if you want to keep going higher in your position you just keep repeating this same process. Always looking to what the next position is that you want or, if you get that dream job stay there that’s fine too.

Now, in the commentary I’ll give you some more detailed tips and suggestions on how to advance your career.

See you there. Bye for now.