Career Management Options

Here are 7 'Career Management' activities - Ways to Increase Your Marketability in a Changing Economy.

• Can you take night courses?
• Can you do distance learning or online courses?
• Can you negotiate a 'Study Leave' when necessary
  - i.e. time off to upgrade yourself with a full-time study opportunity.

Over the year before you go on your study leave, you can arrange with your employer, to have a certain amount withheld from your monthly paycheck. Then while you are gone, they'll send you a monthly cheque. It's a way of setting up your own savings plan, to get you through the time you need to do that full-time program, without having to worry about money.

• Can you join an association in your field, where you can network, get to know people and 'get known', and hear about job opportunities before they are advertised?
• Can you volunteer a couple of hours a week at a organization, where you feel you can make a difference? These will also provide networking opportunities where you can make useful connections.

3. STAY MOBILE

• Are you reluctant to move, when you see a job in another city, state, or country, that will boost your career? You don't have to think of this as a long-term commitment.
• Can you do it for a year? That's manageable. When you have that experience under your belt, you will then be at a different level in your 'career', which opens up a lot of opportunities that weren't there before.

• Are you willing to redefine your role in the family, when it works for the family, of course?
• Can you plan and work together with your partner, so things can be easier in terms of supporting a family? Sometimes, the main income-earner temporarily changes, and you support that, and don't take it as a threat to your ego.

• Have you considered two part-time jobs, so if one folds, the other is there to pay the bills?

You would need to be looking around for other opportunities. You wouldn't necessarily stay in that arrangement indefinitely. But it can get you back into the stream of things, and feeling empowered and self-confident again.

While you are working, you can also look into finding ways to save or invest some of your income, for those times when you are not working. Many choose to invest 10% of their earnings in a Retirement Account each year. This is worth investigating.

Every time you get into a new job, you learn new skills, and acquire new experiences, which you will then take with you into your future jobs. Look at every job you do, as a learning experience, which will enhance your value to all your future employers.

You deserve more than getting stuck in a job you feel indifferent about, you don't like, or can't stand. There's more to life than that. Career Management or Planning can help you stay on top of career.

As you build your career through Career Management, you build a life along with it. Your life will be as good as you make it. Choose wisely what you want to work at, so you can enjoy the time you spend working.

"Keep interested in your own career; however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time."

Desiderata