1. It is unbelievable how clearing your MBA creates a herd mentality when it comes to career choice. All finance & Banking majors want to be in Treasury. Most HR passouts want to do OD…etc etc. And believe me they have no clue what the job entails.
2. Now & then I come across those who refuse a bigger role cause the company is not revising the salary while offering the new role. They say “Why should I work more for the same salary?”  In the long run, these are the same people who usually hear from their employer “Why will I give you more salary for the same job?”
3. I recollect an incident when an employee had put in his resignation. When I asked him the reason, he said “I have completed 3 yrs”, I waited for him to finish the sentence when I realized that he had in fact completed explaining the reason. Jobs should not change with a season, but the question is – Are you leaving for the right reason?
4. Your career decisions have to be taken like any other work decision – dispassionately, weighing all facts. Taking an emotional career decision is as bad as taking a mathematical decision about whom you should marry.
5. Strong trend these days where the lines between being jugaadu and being unethical have blurred. “Oh I just put the wrong dates on my resume by mistake”.” Oh I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to borrow money from my team member”. “I didn’t get an increment and so I claimed the conveyance.” Please please do not set your own rules of conduct. Please follow the organisation’s code of conduct. One small mistake and your career is set back by a few years.
6. “I don’t get along with my Boss”. It’s like saying I don’t get along with my customer. Most of the times it’s your loss. You don’t have to be a Yes Man, but you don’t have to be a rebel either. 
7. “I don’t know what I want to do”. Trust me no one can tell you what is right for you. And if you must hear it from someone else, please let it be someone who understands your strengths and has personally accomplished much.  
8. Problem with a lot of Gen-X employees: They believe that knowing how to do their job is more important than their People Skills. While Knowledge & functional skills help you more in your early career, after some point, it’s a lot about your Interpersonal Skills. You need your team, your colleagues as much as they need you.
9. Your Comfort zone is your biggest enemy. It’s like a slow addiction to smoking. You start finding reasons why it is ok to smoke and after sometime even if you want to quit, its v v hard. Make sure you are constantly upgrading yourself. There are very few buyers for obsolete stock.
10. And lastly, managing your career is like managing your children. You can’t give less and expect more. It usually works the other way round.

More on each of these in my coming posts……