5 Tips to Career Success: An Exciting Personal Account

MIND OF AJANLEKOKO

Ajanlekoko, an electrical engineer, is a Senior Manager in one of the telecommunication companies operating in Nigeria. He earlier made same post on Nairaland.com

This is an original collection of musings. Original in the sense that they are all from my practical experiences and observations.
Seeing as I notice most of the postings here are from freshers in the whole corporate rat race, I thought maybe a few tips would not be a bad idea.

Sorry this is not a how to find a job or how to be promoted manual. Apart from God’s favour, I have no idea of how to find a job. This are just general attitudinal tips.
The rest is up to you. Also, it isn’t a boast, or some kind of sales pitch. Just some advice I would like to share. I’m still quite young myself, but I have had quite a busy career, and also had a good run. The forum I hope would be a safe place to share info and advice without publishing personal information about myself.

So here goes:

1. Develop and Keep an Open Mind

Most of us leave school with a clear (?) idea of what we think we want to do, with little or zero knowledge of how the world really works. As Yorubas like to say, ‘ibi ti o ba ko si e’ is usually the mindset of most people. The problem with this approach is it is usually based on the school experience, which I can tell you now is definitely out of touch with reality. Especially for people who find themselves living and working in Nigeria.
The best thing is to actually take some time to find out how the world really works, and not be in a hurry to commit to anything. Whether it’s three years, three months, three weeks, etc, try to take some time out to measure yourself and find out exactly what you think you would want to do for the rest of your life, or for starters. I know this is always tricky in this modern competitive mindset we all possess, but trust me, it is essential to have a clear head at the beginning. Leave the competition behind in school. Life aint school. In fact, if you don’t have your mind fully made up, take your time about it.

2. Don’t Fall into the ‘Lifelong Learning’ Syndrome

I have this theory, about an ‘Eternal Student Syndrome’ where people for some time make career decisions beliving they still have a lot to learn. So they persistently switch from career possibility to career possibility, even acquiring various palis, investing lots of time and money in the process. They learn a lot of relevant, and not so relevant stuff, and may at some point look like Jack-Of-All-Trades, making it difficult for corporate recruiters to figure them out. Today it’s CFA, tomorrow it’s SAP, the day after CIPM, and so on.

This one is a bit tricky. Some people are actually cut out for, and pursue a career in, academics, which is in essence, lifelong learning. This definitely is not all of us. Also, you usually need to invest in your future any which way. However, these things need to be done in a structured way, must tie in with your future career goals, and/or your current career realities. To get ahead in the corporate world, you usually have to learn very quickly, and move on. If you have to do something, do it quickly and move on to the next thing. Don’t dwell too much on anything. Usually recommend that if you want to acquire a postgrad degree or certification(and this is becoming compulsory these days), ensure you do it within the first three years of your working career. For most people it does not get easier as you go along, as the various other elements of life (marriage, childbearing) eventually set in, and these tend to slow you down somewhat.

3. Avoid the over-ambitious Mindset

Like I said earlier, the modern world is an ambitious one. However, just like we have gravity, we also have corporate ceilings or restrictions which tend to pull us back down. Also,ambition is in essence knowing what you want and pushing for it. However, to avoid an early burnout in your career (and yes, burnout is very real), you need to conserve your energy. Very rarely in the corporate world will you find organizations that are genuinely committed to giving you wings to fly in your career, and helping you to be all you can be. Rather than the organization sucking you dry, you should be the one doing the sucking.
I have a theory of never moving on from a job/position until I’m 100% sated, and the current situation has no more to offer. That way, I am never frustrated and I’m always happy at my job. In essence, no matter what any self-help book tells you, never give 100% to anybody, but push to get 100% from everybody. Everybody as in organizations, not people.

4. Build Relationships – Don’t Burn Bridges

Sometimes we’re always in a hurry to take a position, or burn our bridges. In many organizations, competitive behaviour is even promoted, and the resultant effect is that rather than making friends, freshers usually make enemies, do their best to undermine each other, and do all sorts of underhand stuff.  Mst end up broken, in spirit, and just maybe one or two will get an unjust leg up. For those also, they leave a culture of enmity, which always comes back to bite them.

Personally I believe competitive behaviour must be discouraged at entry level. In all cases, most entry level staff are not really ready for mature, fair, and healthy competition. Why most organizations would take a contrary position is that the bottom line these days are more important than building a common culture at work, one which employees want to identify with, and be proud of. Now that everything has gone bust, and the most pristine, like Citigroup, are collapsing like a pack of cards, it lends a lot more credence to my view.

Also, more importantly, competitive behaviour is the perfect motivation to sell your soul. There are lots of old hands in the system who are ready to take advantage of your immaturity without a single scruple. This part is always difficult to explain to people, but I’ll just say don’t let anybody promise you the world with a view to taking advantage of you.

At the risk of taking up too much time on this, I’ll exit this point with a personal example. I left my last job around a year ago to move to another player in the same industry. Three of us resigned at the same time, two of us actually moved to the same company, one of them is now my direct boss. A joint send-off was held in our favour, and I was the only one of the three who got a standing ovation for more than a minute. That remains one of the proudest moments of my career, and I treasure it more than any award or commendation from Management.

5. Be Positive and Consistent, Not Arrogant. No Matter what you think, the world will always change
In the 90s and early 2000s, IBTC was almost a myth in the banking industry. Do you know their building near the British High Commission on Ozumba? The bank was so hyped back then that it was the Ivy league of work environment. For you young bankers, ask your senior bankers what it was like in those pre-consolidation days. To work in IBTC meant you were at the top of your game. Now nko? The bank has totally lost that A grade identity. It’s just any other bank, and I wouldn’t even say one of the top choices to work in sef. The blue chip bankers who worked there at the time are now part of the ‘gbogbo ero’ bankers.

When I left school, it was a big deal at the time for EE grads to work with Telnet, Resourcery, Omnes Schlumberger and GS Telecom. In fact, because I was a 2.2 grad, I was turned down for work in a lot of those places. Today nko? The MD of Telnet is a personal friend and was at my wedding a couple of years back. I have professional relationships with the MDs of GS (now Gateway Telecom), Resourcery, and a lot of other new companies like that. In fact, even by reading this nairaland jobs and career section, I don’t see too many people clamouring to work in any of those places. Omnes Schlumberger even got sold by Schlum, all the engineers fled, and I don’t even know what’s happening there nowadays, if the company still exists.

Now I am not trying to brag before people start to lose the context of what I’m saying and go ‘he has come again, boaster, slowpoke, etc, etc, like I got in one thread like that . I’m just trying to point out the value of consistency. Some times, we have the tendency to feel that we have arrived, or that we have totally lost out. Far from it. If you have a good head start, build on it and progress. If not, take whatever you can get now and work hard to build on it. You are by no means done. For those of us who believe in God, even death is not the end. Like that saying says, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a lion or gazelle. When daylight comes, you had better be running!

Peace.