Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I am a strong believer of stereotypes in job success. I always notice that most successful people in any given career usually fit a stereotype as personality, age, and appearance. If you don't fit that stereotype you are seen as an outsider and will likely never go anywhere in the career field unless you are twice as good.
This right here is likely the reason you've repeatedly failed. Failing to treat people as individuals and pay attention to their actions/needs leads to co-workers, employees and senior leaders to view your contribution as a negative to the business, and therefore expendable.
Until you change your behavior, you will continue to fail.
My friend's mother had a pretty rough go as a teacher, but she kept going to college getting more degrees. She ended up starting her own private school issued high school diplomas. She became her own boss and quit dealing with all of the politics. I think sometimes you just have to take matters into your own hands.
I can definitely pinpoint when the whole job thing changed. Beginning my career came easy at first - I graduated college in 1999, and jobs were FALLING from the sky. I was able to move from job to job up until 2001, and I assumed it would always be like this. Things stalled out when I began searching around 2006-ish. I had NEVER had so much difficulty finding a job! I became depressed and so frustrated I felt nearly suicidal. One friend even implied that it was MY fault, or that someone in my reference chain was giving bad references, but I was using the same references I had used forever. Folks didn't believe me when I said it was the ECONOMY. I think history has been on my side.
I have now made peace with the fact that this is a new reality.
There are a lot of folks who were stalled during the recession who remain mostly on the outside looking in. It will stunt a lot of careers.
Career success only comes easy to the successful brown-nosing employees who have it down to a science and the VPs son or daughter. The rest of us are behind the 8 ball and have to work for everything we get
While I will argue externally that luck isn't involved, internally I know that it is a component of my success. My career is dependent in intelligence, specifically decisive decision making and problem solving, as well a communicating and disseminating information to inquiring parties. On top of that, passion for the job, industry, and wanting to do something meaningful carried me the rest of the way. I'm happy behind the scenes, but sometimes wish I could tell the customer directly what they want cannot or will not happen as scheduled.
The only people I've know to have an easy time of it are two groups:
1) The "beautiful people" Particularly true if young, female and attractive - no offense intended, but it clearly helps. This also applies to anyone who's just naturally gifted in appearance, charisma, and so forth. These are the people who may or may not have the skills needed, but people just enjoy them being around so much they have an easier time finding work and keeping jobs. For example, if one looked at the people laid off at my first job, not a single one was a woman under 30, despite them gladly tossing out engineers of all other categories (age, race, etc.) - given how male-dominated engineering is, I'm sure that nobody thought of how this would improve the "office appearances" - right...
Maybe attractive women have an advantage for low level jobs, but women get promoted at lower rates than their male peers and rarely make it past manager so this is not accurate.
The only people I've know to have an easy time of it are two groups:
1) The "beautiful people" Particularly true if young, female and attractive - no offense intended, but it clearly helps. This also applies to anyone who's just naturally gifted in appearance, charisma, and so forth. These are the people who may or may not have the skills needed, but people just enjoy them being around so much they have an easier time finding work and keeping jobs. For example, if one looked at the people laid off at my first job, not a single one was a woman under 30, despite them gladly tossing out engineers of all other categories (age, race, etc.) - given how male-dominated engineering is, I'm sure that nobody thought of how this would improve the "office appearances" - right...
2) Connected people: Is your dad a VP? Congrats - you've got a job for life! Even if you do really stupid and immature things at work, it probably won't matter. You'll keep your job while others will be thrown under the bus when the layoffs hit. Again, I've seen this happen plenty of times - people like that never need to worry about their career since their connections will handle it for them.
As for the rest of us, we have to slog through crud to get the leftovers.
Good luck.
THIS!!! My wife's last job, her co-worker is a fracking idiot, lazy, good for nothing piece of crap. Comes in late every single day. Barely does anything and everyone complains about him and his work ethics but it doesn't matter, his mom is the CFO of the company!
I know this is an old thread, but going back to the basic question of "has success come easy..." with focus on "easy" while I have been relatively successful, it didn't come easy. I've got 35 years in, and in that time I've only known a couple for whom success came easily. In all cases, knowing them, their background, abilities, and actual on the job performance, I'd say "being one of the beautiful people", having connections, and charisma, far outweighed actual ability, knowledge, hard work, or performance.
An example of one of them is this guy I worked with for a while. He was about 25, so 20 years younger than me. Supposedly a highly talented engineer. First met him when he was hired into a management job ahead of several people who had been there and earned it. For a guy who was supposed to be a top graduate and highly talented engineer, he had zero actual engineering ability and little knowledge. But he had connections and a magical ability to get management to believe anything he said. I mean he made no bones about the fact that he would lie right to their faces because he knew they'd believe him. Only stayed in that job about a year before moving up again. He hit the senior executive ranks before he was thirty.
Yea, sure, after 12 years in the Navy, grinding the job and jumping (along with moving) from job to job climbing the ladder (working numerous hours as well), and at the same time completing my MBA, I can say at least my last two promotions were "easy" lol.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
