Build skills for success, not titles. Your business life depends on it.

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We all follow the crowd when we are indecisive.

This is not something to be ashamed of, or a weakness. It is one of the most natural urges of humans.

As living beings who have always lived, worked and lead their lives with others; it is a reflexive survival strategy to watch and follow the behaviour of the group we’re in. If 3 people are looking up to the roof of a building on a pavement, all or most of the people passing by will look up as well. Curiosity. Instinct. These kind on decisions aren’t made with logic; they’re momentary and reflexive.

When it comes to career management, these reflexes and instincts work against us. This is especially true these days when the working ways of industries are changing very fast.

It feels much more secure to follow the crowd in career paths. Especially if this crowd is made up of more experienced, senior people who seem to know what they’re doing; it is very difficult not to follow them. But be careful.

If a road is closed due to construction, you cannot use it however much you want to and no matter how many times people used it before. The only way home is to understand the situation you are in through logic and smarts, analyse the problem and try to produce a solution. For this you first need to understand what changed and ask what the alternative solutions are.

There is a road that our “masters”, managers, mentors and even parents that started working between 1960 and 2000 took and know to be working out of experience.

This road goes like this: Study hard when a student, get good grades, graduate from a good university, join a good company, don’t change jobs after periods longer than 8-10 years, be loyal to institutions, invest in your title, take care of the company prestige, be retired.

Don’t be upset if you start as an Assistant Expert. First be an Expert, then be a Senior Expert, then Assistant Expert, then Regional Manager and the list goes on… If you take a left from the pharmacy and go over the Directorship hill, you’ll be just fine. Work hard until your 40’s and the reward will be yours.

Believe me, those who describe this road intend no harm. This is how they reached the address; they followed the crowd and succeeded. So with a helpful urge they describe the same road. There was really a period in recent past that one had to find a job in another sector to be able to become a Senior Manager.

That period is over now. That road is closed.

Now if we look into the future from 2018; let’s look at “Business Life” logically, not by following the crowd. There are other open roads. But it’s not possible to find these roads by following the crowd and listening to the advice of the previous generation. Let’s analyse the sector, economy, world we are in and make reasoning.

• There is a graduate inflation. For the last 10 years, it is no longer a guarantee to be a graduate of the best universities.
• There is a title inflation. Precious-looking titles like “Senior” or “Regional Manager” alone will not get you the job when you go to another company for a job interview.
• Traditional work fields are getting narrower. Star sectors of the last 40 years; retail, fast consumption, banking, finance, logistics are narrowing more and more every day. As a result of the narrowing, it is getting more difficult to get a promotion within and to get a job in these corporations. It’s now not surprising to hear that the giants in these sectors are firing hundreds of people.
• In many sectors, the competition between those with lower job security is sharper; goals more aggressive; people more tense.
• If ıs a must to shine out with special skills and qualifications to find a job in traditional work fields.
• We are going through an automatisation/robotisation period that is affecting the whole world that possibly will bring the biggest change we’ve ever seen. Now there are ATMs in places of many bank clerks of the past. Unemployment will keep increasing; in a couple of years, half of your co-workers won’t be able to do that job even if they want to.

There emerges a new road…

On the other hand, there are many new and growing job opportunities.

• Code-writers are building a new world.
• Graphic designers, web-designers, voiceover doers, video editors, or shooting professionals can serve customers from all around the world without even signing a contract.
• Entrepreneurs can detect the lacking points in the sector and come up with a new product within a week. Whether they are going to succeed or fail depends on their own visions and skills.
• Generally all sectors including creativity and skill are in their golden age. People who have the skills of creating audio or visual media, merging new ideas with new systems, motivating people, bringing people around a common goal, selling fun and entertainment, getting people to play games have an open road ahead.
• There are hundreds of work fields that we hadn’t even heard before. (Penetration Tester, Multi-Platform Experience Designer, Story Strategist and many more…)
• Lastly, people haven’t lessened, they’re reading much more compared to 20 years ago. Don’t think of this only as the number of books being read (social media updates, blogs). So the skills of writing and interpreting complex data are high trends.

Now there is a new road for a business life. You need skills to proceed on this road, not titles.

There hasn’t been a better time for pushing, discovering and improving your own skills.

Those who run after producing better and higher quality outcomes will win the future; not those running after titles to impress others.

Share this situation with those around you who needs to know about this. And read more on business life and career-building.