Tài liệu 10 THINGS THEY NEVER TELL YOU WHEN YOU START WORK docx

The First Thing They Never Tell You

"You will be paid the lowest possible amount
they can get away with."

Why should this be so?

1. For a start there is little union power around these days to argue
otherwise.
2. You have to wait two years now before you get the employee
protection you used to get after 6 months.
3. There are plenty of other people waiting in the wings to take your
place for a lower fee if you refuse.
4. If you do protest, you can typically kiss promotion goodbye.
5. Employee costs are a significant percentage of total costs and
are usually monitored in budgets and reports. It is often a key
management performance indicator (like production, wastage,
stock levels and so on). So it is in their own promotional interests
to keep them as low as possible.

So what's the answer? It depends on your view.

If you need security more than a stunning wage, stay put and
argue your case at your annual reviews.

If you want the money, you need to build yourself a glittering CV
and jump ship at suitable moments. This may mean volunteering for
projects, taking extra responsibility, making suggestions, and
sometimes swallowing your pride and compromising your better
judgement.

In the lower ranks, getting your way is secondary to getting
promoted. The difference you can make is not significant, anyway.
The people who can make a difference and can get you promoted
are higher up.

Besides, you will eventually have the last laugh when you become
more marketable. And nothing annoys your antagonists more than
agreeing with them! Be satisfied with that. And make note of No.9
here.

Most of all, keep records of your work, your results and your
improvements as evidence for your CV.

Whatever you do, you should realise that it is all a means to an
end. Your aim is to build an impressive CV and to back it up with the
facts and figures of your proof of capability for your next employer.

The Second Thing They Never Tell You

"You'll never make good money working for other people."

How many senior managers are there at your place of work? And
how many others are there? The ratio is likely to be anywhere from
40:1 to 200:1. So if you have their education, background, ability,
contacts and perhaps luck, those will be your odds of making that
kind of money also. If you lack any one of those parameters, the
odds increase exponentially.

Then ask yourself how long you would have to wait before you
started earning that sort of cash? By the time you start making
enough money to relax with, it's nearly time to retire.

Pah! You want the cash NOW, just when you need it most - when
you want to build a home, raise a family, do stuff, take activity
holidays, drive a fast car or whatever.

So what do you do about it?

Well, you could look to get into one of the more lucrative and
growing business sectors such as computing, finance or recruitment.
Or one of the traditional ones such as law or accountancy. Any of
these may mean re-training. And you must be sure you are going to
at least enjoy it a bit. Alternatively, you could put your efforts into
Number 1, above, which may take years to develop, or…

Have outside interests! This is much more fun. Don't fall for get-
rich quick schemes (because they are anything but) or home-
working schemes. And be wary also of MLM (multi-level marketing)
stuff.

Keep your eyes and ears open. Talk to friends. Can you club
together and start something? Think about what interests you; what
you already know something about. What have you learnt from your
employer than you can apply outside? Can you trade your skills
elsewhere? Are there certain elements of what your employer does
that you could do better or cheaper? You certainly won't have the
overheads they have and that will make you cheaper. Are there
ideas and suggestions that would work but which they have failed to
or refuse to take on board? "Ripping off" your employer in this way is
probably the most common way of doing your own thing.
Accumulate everything you can from them that you think might help.

Keep these questions in your mind and sooner or later ideas will
start to flow, often in the most unexpected places.

I'm always on the look out for good part-time business ideas
myself to pass onto ProFile members. Perhaps I will have the
opportunity to divulge some to you in the future.

The Third Thing They Never Tell You

"The willing donkey carries the heaviest load"

Workplace stress is fast becoming the plague of the 21
st
century.
You could fill your house with references on why this is so, but that's
for the academics. We haven't got the time or the will to analyse it
all. But what is important is how to you may avoid it.

Basically, you need to work smarter, not harder. Here are a few
tips on doing just this.

- Pick out the key issues of your work. Identify and work on the
important, priority items; the ones that will progress your career.
This is the stuff you should be focusing your efforts on in order to
make an impact; everything else is just treading water.

- However, you can't just ignore the routine stuff. This you should
either systematise, delegate or ignore. Having a systematic way of
doing the everyday stuff gets it done quicker, more efficiently and
with far fewer errors or wasted thinking time. Write all your
procedures down, if it helps to get it clear in your own head. Then
look for ways to simplify it. Once it is systematised, it is easier to
delegate as well.

- Don't let people dump work on you. It's just laziness. Get them to
take it to the boss (unless you are the boss), or suggest someone
else is better qualified to do whatever it is. Just get them out of
your space. Offer suggestions by all means - two heads are better
than one - but don't do the work for them. They will usually find a
solution if forced to.

- Delegate upwards. If you have tricky tasks to do, new stuff or
things that require a lot of donkey work on your part, there are
certain ways around it.
Ask your boss for help, guidance and support. In the modern
organisation, that is what they are there for, anyway.
They will often ask you to "stick with it for now" or "do your
best" - and then promptly forget about it. In which case, you are
surprised, are you not, that they should shun an opportunity to
improve efficiency and effectiveness by giving you the support
you need.
• Ask for training. You'd be surprised what modern software can
do these days; you just need to know where to look.
• Tell your boss it is really someone else's job and outside of your
remit. You would do it as a favour, but as it stands, it is just too
time-consuming.


ProFile's exclusive book, "Career Magic" explains how to sell
the benefits of your proposals and includes a comprehensive list of
1,000 benefit-generator words to help you do this most effectively.
The Fourth Thing They Never Tell You

"They don't really mean it"

"They" applies more to senior than to middle managers. When
they get ratty or annoyed, they often don't really mean it.

Let's begin with the basics. There are 3 types of person in the
world:

- Those for whom the job comes first, regardless of who suffers or
indeed who does it.
- Those who believe you should care for your people first and only
do the job within such comfort zones.
- Those who don't care about the job or the people, so long as they
are in control.

The latter category is the most dangerous. These are the
politicians and the senior managers of the world and they achieve
their position through a craving for power. The nature and success
of both the people and the job are irrelevant, so long as they have
the whip hand.

Many, many tactics are employed to enforce this. Getting angry is
just one of them. A bit of well-placed rage can work wonders on the
vulnerable and the more sensitive - which typically includes
everybody else.

However, standing up to them will not break the façade.
Maintaining a show of strength in all weathers is paramount to them.
You just have to see it for what it is - play-acting - and take it in your
stride.

The Fifth They Never Tell You

"Get noticed - Get promoted"

It's not what you know, it's who you know - and, indeed, what they
themselves know. A few percent increase in the quality, quantity or
thoroughness of your work can take a lot of effort. This is time that
could be used to rub shoulders with those who have the power to
promote you and whose opinion of you counts.

I'm not saying you should creep and smarm, but there are two
particular advantages in this.

1. You gain information and you "create" luck for yourself. You
stand a better chance of being in the right place at the right time
and of discovering the difference that will make a difference to
your prospects; that one piece of information that can open
doors for you.

2. You will gain in professionalism.

Look at it from their point of view. Number 4 tells us that the more
senior the manager, the more political they are. Do they take time
out to tell you what a great person you are? That you're doing a
great job? Or to grill you on the details of the work? No. They are
only interested with their own progression. You do the work and they
take it to show their bosses just how great they are at getting things
done.

So the more work you take on, the better your boss will appear in
their boss' eyes. A few tips on avoiding the graft are given in
Number 3. To also appear like a good promotional prospect…

- Get in early and leave on time. Staying late rarely gets you
noticed. But being there before others certainly does. You use this
time to work on the stuff that will advance your career - or even
your personal stuff.
- When the boss walks in, have something significant to ask, to
suggest or to comment about. Show keen interest and
understanding.
- Request training. But you must give sound reasons, including an
aim; i.e. what you intend to do with your new knowledge for the
good of the company and, in particular, your boss.
- Gain general knowledge of your company's operations outside of
your own field or area, including the people. Getting promoted will
mean a wider remit, so you will need to know more about a
broader range of issues. The more you already know, the lower
the risk to the managers in promoting you.

In a nutshell, if you want to be promoted you have to start
behaving like you already have been. Then it will become obvious to
others what sort of material you really are.


The Sixth They Never Tell You

"You don't go to work to be liked"

That's not to say you have to be a miserable, awkward git to
everyone around you. But if there are people who don't fit your
desire to improve, you don't have to hang around with them or
tolerate them.

There are a multitude of whiners, moaners, groaners, rumour-
mongers, gossipers and malicious corrupters in any organisation.
These people are toxic. One bad apple can spoil a whole barrel.
They also need the company to pour their scorn out onto. They will
walk considerable distance to have a good old moan with someone
who will sit and listen. Just watch them do it! Their self-esteem is so
low, it is impossible for them to keep it to themselves. Misery must
seek company.

Don't get sucked into this quagmire. Making a living is hard
enough as it is without this drain on your motivation. Besides, these
people are going nowhere; they will never gain in rank, so you don't
need them.

Instead, hang around with the optimists, the idea-generators and
the energetic. This is where important and valuable information and
the contacts come from.

Besides, bosses (usually) know only too well who are the doers
and who are the malingerers. Hang around with the malingerers and
you'll be guilty by association. Hang around with the doers and you'll
be part of a valuable network.

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