showcase your career portfolio

Your career portfolio will be the tool that you need to demonstrate your skills. It acts as the support document to show what you have done. To be effective, it has to be professionally designed and contains the necessary information.

Some of the key points to be included are...

a. your current resume including your education, jobs and the duties and responsibilities. The jobs can be arranged in the reversed chronological order, with the latest job appear on the top.

b. Awards and recognition - This is the area where you can include all your degrees and certificates. Insert in the recognition you had received in school and your contributions to various clubs or society. If you have awards from kings or queen, include them.

c. Sample of work output. For example, if you are an artist, show the a sample of you art. If you are a scientist, take the picture of the published work in the international journals.

The career portfolio will provide the evidence of your capability. Rather than talking about what you have done, you are showing the example of your work. It provides a more credible demonstrationof your capability.

Setting the Path

Selecting your first career is the most critical. This is because it will set the direction or path to your career.

I give my own example. When I join the national carrier as aircraft engineer, unknowingly, I had set the path for my future career. I consider it as unknowingly, as I was too you to think for my own future. I cut off most of the other options, I cannot be a doctor or teacher.

Once your are in your career, these are the tips to move forward in your role:

a. Take stock of your strength. This the most important, as you have to leverage on your strength. This include your natural preference. If you are the type who prefer to study or work alone, you will not excel in jobs that require mass involvement of other people, like marketing or PR. You may be suited to job like doctor or researcher.

b. Evaluate your goal. Ask yourself... what do you want to achieve in your life. The good thing is, if you really want it, your can change your personality. I know a person who was timid and quiet in his early school life, turned to be a powerful politician liked by many.

c. Know the trade. Have the knowledge and skill is important. It will determine your ability to do the job as well as the perception of the people. It is unlikely that people trust you if you lack the knowledge.

d. Attend the trade events. This has multiple benefits. It can help you to upgrade your skills and at the same time increase your contacts.

Identifying Difficult People

The skills at the work place can be broadly divided into 3 groups:

1. Technical Skill - mainly in relation to the production of products, either physical or services.

2. Human skill - or social skill, it is about maintaining harmonious relationship with other co-workers. The skill helps to bind the people as a team and works to achieve a common goal.

3. Conceptual skills - about abstract constructs or ideas.

One of the skills within the human skill is on how to deal with difficult person. Unfortunately we will meet a person who appears to enjoy making things difficult for us. A difficult person can fall into the following categories.

a. Hostile person - he or she is the kind of person who look at you as an enemy. Always looking for an opportunity to hit at you and constantly looking for your faults. He may have some of the sought after qualities, such as confidence or fluency in his speech, and he tend to look down and even bully those who are not within that category.

b. The constant moaner - this is the person sitting next to you who constantly moans and complaints. He complaints about the bosses, his colleagues or even his own workers. He may have the wrong perception that he is the better of the lots. The the constant complaints, he seem to be powerless to incur changes.

c. Unresponsive individual - this is a person who live in his own small enclosed world. He tend to do as little as possible . Possibly he is so afraid of making mistake and blamed for his action and put a facade to hide his lack of knowledge.

d. Know-all - He is looking for recognition and refuse to accept that he may not be knowledgeable.

e. Indecisive - he does not seem to be able to make decision. Or worst still, he changes his mind every few hours. He may be trying to analyse and get the best answer. As data may not be readily available, he cannot decide as yet.

These are some of the quoted examples of difficult people. May be we can help to avoid the pitfall.