Hello I'm Dr Rob Yeung I'm an organisational
psychologist and a coach at a
consultancy called Talentspace and I'd
like to talk to you about how you can
future-proof your career in other words
how you can make yourself employable or
even promotable in the years to come.
Now the first part of future proofing
yourself is to make sure you are
demonstrating forward momentum in your
career. So have a think about where you
would realistically like to see yourself
in perhaps one or two years time then
take a look at job descriptions for the
kind of work that you would like to be
doing, understand the skills and
experiences that are required for that
role and then work backwards so if you
need certain skills and experiences in
two years time then what do you need to
have achieved within the next year
within the next six months the next
three months and therefore what do you
need to start doing now. One component
which should go into your plan is
reading and understanding what's going
on in the world and I don't mean just
understanding about your technical area
about the latest rules and regulations
for example but understanding what's
going on in terms of politics and
economics in terms of business and
management even technology and
psychology but the key here is to make
sure that you are consulting credible
sources whether these are physical
newspapers or online publications
because some people make the mistake
they fall into the trap of simply
believing everything that they read
without understanding that some sources
are simply completely unreliable and
even some of the better publications
may have some built in right wing or
left wing bias for example. So do think
about the bias inherent in the pieces
that you're reading and corroborate what
you're reading whenever possible but I
would argue that reading about the world
should only be a relatively small
component of your development plan a
better way to understand what's going on
in the world is by having conversations
with people that you respect. So go to
the occasional conference talk to
entirely new people to find out what the
newest
ideas and insights are, keep in touch
with ex colleagues people that you've
worked with perhaps customers or
suppliers too, you can do this by phone
and email but also do make time to meet
with people face-to-face as well
occasionally this could be as little as
just once every other week so just twice
a month either get together on a
one-to-one basis or in small groups
because there is no substitute for this
type of conversation to understand the
trends the pressures and opportunities
in the world. But whenever you're reading
something or you're talking to people
remember that this is all in service of
future proofing your career and what
employers really value is people who can
solve problems for them so when you read
about something new try to think about
how you can translate that into a
benefit for your organisation, when you
meet someone new think about how you
could use that relationship to solve a
problem for your team your department or
the organisation. For example if your
team is thinking about implementing some
new way of working or perhaps a piece of
software then ask yourself who do I know
or what have I read that might help me
to identify problems and therefore make
the implementation more successful.
A final tip one really useful thing you
can do to benefit your career is to set
up what's known as a reciprocal
mentoring relationship so the idea is
that you find someone who's at a similar
career stage to you and the two of you
get together occasionally perhaps on a
monthly a quarterly basis or on whatever
timeframe suits you and you talk about
each of your career frustrations and
objectives so for example if you and I
were to work together perhaps you would
start so you talk about what is
currently frustrating you and your
objectives then it would be my job to
come up with ideas actions that you
could take to help to propel you forward
in your career and then we'd swap over
so then I would
talk about what's frustrating me and my
ambitions and then it'll be your job to
encourage or even push me to take action
to push me forwards in my career but
when I've seen this work well people
usually agree to a set of ground rules
so this isn't just a social conversation
an opportunity to catch up or gossip and
complain about work this should be about
having a career oriented discussion
thinking about how you can propel
yourselves forward in your careers.