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​The biggest fallacy in business: if I work hard I’ll eventually get to where I want to be.

​While hard work and a myriad of other competency-based characteristics are certainly important in growing ones career, they play second fiddle to the #1 most important thing that drives our careers.

Recently I found myself engaged in a discussion I hear all too often:

“I’ve been trying to land a job doing (insert job title) but I’m not getting any responses from my job applications online.”

This was coupled with:

“I’m trying to break into (insert industry) but I have no direct industry experience and am having a hard time with people taking my capabilities serious without industry experience.”

​Both of these situations and the people involved are experiencing the same thing – they haven’t built or leaned on the appropriate people to help them with their career quest.

Enter in the #1 career advancement driver: RELATIONSHIPS

The people which make up your professional ecosystem are ultimately the ones who will make the difference in your career, not just hard work.

Back to our scenario above.  Applying to jobs on the internet, or the black hole of death as I commonly refer to it, does have its merits, yet by no means are online job boards the best place to land your dream job.  Online job boards are built to do one thing and one thing well – weed people like you out.  According to Robert Meier, President of Job Market Experts, only 2% of candidates applying for jobs online actually get an interview.

My personal experiences have shown that many people find the online job board process frustrating, cumbersome and verging on a galactic time suck.

If we can’t rely on online job boards, what options do we have?  Enter back to the stage our good ole friend ‘Relationships’, our #1 suitor for career advancement.

Your education, hard work and perhaps charm will only take you so far.  Relationships, the people above you, below you and your peers, are the ones that stand to make the biggest impact in your career.  When we are in school, soon to graduate and looking for our first opportunity, it’s people that give us the chance, not necessarily our stellar academic performance.  Our grades may assist in getting us to the conversation however the driver behind making the decision is someone who wants to give you a shot. 

Same can be said in corporate America.  I remember the first time I was going for a management promotion.  My boss at the time told me, “it’s not the people above you that will promote you, it’s your peers and people who report to you.”  That really struck home because if my boss were to ask my peers and employees what they thought of me and the response he got was less than stellar the likelihood that feedback would impact my forward progress in my career is likely to be substantial.
When you’re neck deep in your career often times it’s who you know, not what you know.  The ‘who you know’ opens doors, ‘what you know’ helps you facilitate the work at hand, not landing the job itself.

What many professionals miss out on is the importance of building lasting professional relationships.
Not every relationship has the capacity to turn into something that is special and will impact your career however if carefully practiced and made a priority it is certainly possible several of your professional relationships overtime can produce fruitful results for both parties involved.

Why is it then people don’t spend more time and energy in building their ecosystem of professional relationships?

Answer: because it isn’t easy nor is it quick in producing results.

Relationships take time and investment.  The best relationships have a ‘pay-it-forward’ mentality where both people see the bigger opportunity to help one another without quid pro quo.  If you’ve ever read the book ‘Go Giver’ by Bob Burg, it also happens to be my favorite all time book on life and business, you know that relationships and the power of doing for others often times sets the stage for incredible life experience to come.  This of course is true in business.

Relationships are hard to foster over long periods of time.  It takes trust, consistency and energy.  Yet when done genuinely relationships have the power to open doors that may not have been available without it.

​If you’re read this and feel like it’s time for you to step up and grow your ecosystem of professional relationships follow these steps to get on the glory road of professional relationships.
1. Understand what your WHY is for building relationships? (most importantly, what can you offer to others in the process?)
2. Identify 2-3 professionals within your circle of influence, take each of them out to coffee for the purpose of building a better, tighter and more collaborative relationship
3. Go to industry networking events
4. Rinse and repeat (a couple in-person meetings or events is only the start; build into your schedule 2-3 times a month where you make it a priority to meet with people)

How do you know the decisions you make for your career are the right ones to make?

​On February 20th DeviceAlliance and UCI’s Division of Continuing Education will take aim at the in’s and out’s we face throughout our careers in an event called ‘Medical Device Career Navigation’.
While we are all very different as people in our behaviors and our mindsets it’s remarkable how those differences bond us in similarity.

Many of us will experience the same decisions throughout our career.  Do we take the money or the training?  Prestigious titles versus meaningful work?  Take a step back to hopefully take two forward.  Be my own boss or work for someone else?  Stay the path of employee or seek opportunities in management? Or even leaving a career to begin anew.

The answers to these questions are never easy yet we are all faced them!  In this, a powerful opportunity exists - learning from those who have been there before.

On the 20th of February in Irvine, CA the event ‘Medical Device Career Navigation’ will embark on a journey through the entire life cycle of a career from college graduate to retirement, and everything in between.  Attendees will hear from experienced professionals who represent three career segments:

1. Recent grad/ early stage professional,
2. Corporate life, and
3. Entrepreneurship/ consulting

 
EVENT SPEAKERS

​As we work our way through each career segment we will hear and learn first hand from professionals who have been there and done it before.  We’ll discover the lessons they learned, decisions they made and outcomes they experienced along the way.  We’ll learn from their stories and have opportunities to inquire about our own situations to collect feedback and direction.

During this event we will also discuss structured processes for decision making, like ACIP.  ACIP, or Alternatives, Consequences, Information and Plans, is a process for collecting information and understanding our options BEFORE we make a decision. 

Utilizing processes like ACIP and others which are similar can help improve your decision making process.  Combine that with experienced anecdotes from people who have done it themselves and we have a recipe for improving our chances of making the best decisions for ourselves while reducing regret or heartache along the way.

Save the Date: Be sure to join DeviceAlliance and UCI’s Division of Continuing Education on February 20th, 2018 at 5:30PM for an evening of learning and discussion on ‘Medical Device Career Navigation’.  Event details and RSVP click HERE.