Do you look forward to taking your career to the next level?
Sure everyone wants to build a successful career, but building a successful career does require a lot of hard work.
I am sure that you must have thought about the steps you need to take to build a stellar career, but how effective are your steps.
On your career journey, you may think that you have everything all figured out, but you know no man is an island of knowledge and we all make mistakes at one point or the other in our career.
It is normal to make mistakes as humans, but sometimes there are career mistakes that can cost you a lot, so most times it is better to avoid those kinds of mistakes.
For example; let’s imagine you have decided to buy a car, and for one reason you got duped. You made a mistake of buying the car from the wrong person, but that action has actually caused you to lose your new car.
Just like the example above, your plan to build a thriving career can be thwarted by a careless mistake. To avoid shattering your long-awaited career dream, you should be careful not to make dumb career mistakes.
Good to know! The early career mistakes that you can probably make can be avoided. To make it faster to the top in your career journey, here is a list of 5 Dumb Early Career Mistakes to avoid
1.Not Knowing Your Worth
At the early stages of your career (especially when you are searching for a job), it could be tempting for you to accept anything that comes your way because you don’t know your worth and you are probably desperate.
Knowing your worth simply means understanding your values, skills, abilities tec., and knowing how these values and skills can be applied to a work environment and of course how you should be properly compensated.
Most times, you may think you know your worth, but that may not be the case all the time. It may not be easy for you to recognize your worth when you are desperately searching for a job, and that alone can affect your growth.
Not knowing your worth can put you in a really disadvantaged position when it comes to building on what you already know, and even getting fairly compensated for what you are offering the organization
How to avoid making this mistake
- Evaluate yourself regularly: take an inventory of where you are in your career, what you have achieved, and what you need to achieve.
- Know and understand the value of the skills and abilities that you possess
- Discover the market value of your skills and even your job role; you can discover this by knowing what other people in that same job filed or industry is earning.
- Don’t be scared to show that you know your worth
- Don’t be scared to ask for a raise or promotion (make sure you deserve it)
2.Burning Your Bridges
When you are just starting your career, and probably in your first or second job it could be really tempting for you to use the exit not caring about anybody or anything as soon as you feel the slightest discomfort.
It is okay for you to express any form of discomfort that you may be experiencing with your job, but you should also be careful about how you choose to express it.
We are not saying that you cannot leave a toxic job, but there are several things you need to consider before you call it ‘quit’
Your career journey is just like a ladder, and you know what they say about climbing a ladder; when you are on your career ladder, you should not overlook the people that you meet on your way to the top, because when you are coming down they will not be there to help you.
Whether you just got a better offer, or you thinking of changing your career path, you should be grateful and warm to everyone that has been a part of the process regardless.
No matter how unhealthy your job is, and how badly you need to leave, you should make sure you maintain a positive relationship with your employer and your colleagues. You never can tell where the next big opportunity will come from.
How to avoid making this mistake
- Keep a warm relationship with previous employer and colleagues
- Give at least 2 weeks’ notice before you leave your job
- Offer to help during the transition period
- Keep an active relationship with co-workers on social media platforms
- Resolve conflict before they escalate beyond reconciliation
- Don’t always think that the grass is greener at the other side as there different forms of challenges everywhere.
3.Job Hopping
It is no news that starters are always ready to jump from one job to the other. I know that everyone will always consider a better offer, but the grass is not always greener at the other side.
I am not trying to say that it is wrong for you to accept a better offer or to look forward to a better opportunity, but in the early stages of your career, there are other things that you should consider aside from the pay that you will get.
Many young people tend to leave one job to another job even with a 5% compensation increase, and if you keep going on that way, you will keep moving from one job to the other.
Hopping from one job to the other is one dumb career mistake you should avoid making at all, do you know why? Maybe not
This is why; it creates a negative impression of you to your prospective employer even at the mere sight of your CV. It gives the impression that you will still leave the job if you eventually get it, and they may not be able to handle hiring someone else in a short time.
Job hopping may also rob you off your career growth and development, because while you are busy hopping from one job to the other, you may just forget that you need to discover your career path and even grow in that field.
There is more to building a successful career than getting compensated for the job that you do. Building a successful career has a lot to do with the value that add to yourself and the organization too, and this is what job hunting can deprive of.
How to avoid making this mistake
- Discover your career path; discovering your career path will give you a sense of direction in your career.
- Build your work values; building work values that cannot be compromised will help you avoid grabbing any opportunity that just comes your way.
- Focus on career growth and development rather than the compensation; at the early stages of your career, you should make sure that you are pursuing your growth, career development and building your skills too.
- Be strategic when you are thinking about changing your job. You should be intentional about your career change. This is all you need to smoothly change your career.
4. Failure to Grasp Learning Opportunities
No matter the natural abilities that you have or the skills that you have been able to acquire, it is also very important for you to take advantage of any learning opportunity.
The knowledge they say is power, and it is even bigger power in the world that we are in today. The world is changing fast especially with technology advancing so quickly.
Considering the rate at which technology is changing the things that we do, it is important for you to stay on top of your game and take advantage of learning opportunities that can put you ahead of others.
Relying on the skills that you have already acquired and not taking conscious steps to learning is one career mistake that you should avoid making if you want to get to the peak of your career.
Your career journey is your journey, and so you have to own it at every stage. Recognizing learning opportunities and making use of those opportunities will set you on a pedestal of success.
So don’t be all soaked in what you already know how to do, explore and push yourself to become a better person.
How to avoid this mistake
- Don’t be too relaxed about what you already know
- Learn to recognize learning opportunities
- See yourself beyond what you are presently
- Be open to other people’s ideas
- Research things that you are not clear on
- Read about what you are doing and where you want to be
- Take classes and online courses
5.Focusing Too Much on Yourself
One career mistake you should avoid making is being too absorbed in yourself that you forget about how you can be of help to others.
This is one mistake that many ambitious and hardworking people make in the early stages of their career. As much as you want to put in your effort to become successful, you should also not forget the role that others paly in helping you become successful.
Getting all soaked up in yourself can rob you off the things you can also learn from others. Helping others will also help you build a good relationship with people while you are moving up the career ladder.
Helping others is a means of building a broad base of support for yourself, and who knows when the need will arise.
How to avoid this mistake
- Be interested in what your co-workers are doing
- Be concerned about your team members challenges
- Be willing to help solve another person’s problem
- Build a symbiotic relationship with your co-workers
- Be interested in other people’s growth
6.Avoiding Challenges
It is very tempting for you to always want to be in your comfort zone, but if you are serious about building a successful career, then remaining in your comfort zone will not be the best option for you.
Avoiding challenges is avoiding growth. If you want to grow in your career, then you should look forward to pushing yourself and challenging yourself to achieve more than what you have achieved.
Taking the easy route all the time will definitely not prepare you for what the future has for you. Sometimes you need to allow yourself to exceed the limit and try to get things done, it may not be easy, but it will prepare you for future things that are yet to come.
The aim of challenges is to enlarge your capacity and to also help you see that you grow your skills and abilities and use it to a greater effect than before.
So avoiding challenges is one early career mistake you should avoid making.
How to avoid making this mistake
- Be open to ideas even if they seem beyond your ability
- Have the mindset that you can achieve any result
- Always look for opportunities that will help you step out of your comfort zone
- Don’t be afraid to try new things
- Be anxious about becoming a better person
Building a successful career requires you to be intentional about the decisions that you make and the steps that take to make sure that you achieve your goals.
It a common saying that; ‘mistakes are normal, you should learn from them’. As true as this is, you don’t have to suffer the consequence of a mistake when it can be simply avoided.
Knowing likely mistakes that you might make in your career and knowing how to avoid them will definitely save you the time you will spend trying to identify and correct errors.
You can save the future of your career today by knowing these 5 dumb early career mistakes to avoid
Especially with technology advancing so rapidly, it’s extremely important to stay on top of your game and not allow your skills to become outdated. As you grow older, you don’t want to be labeled as someone who can’t keep up. Take classes, read, keep your professional network strong–whatever it takes to stay current.