Starting and advancing my career - advice needed

Find opportunities to lead people. Volunteer to take over a project or start your own. Get the project done on time and under budget. Take that experience to your management and use it show your leadership and management skills.

Tell them what you learned, what you did right, challenges you overcame, what you learned about yourself. Above all, show what you learned about people. Not just the "up with people" stuff. For example, maybe you had to take someone off the project because they weren't following through on their commitments. This shows decisiveness and determination.

It doesn't have to be at work. Offer to lead a new initiative or project for one of your clubs or organizations. Try to make it bigger than a dart league at the pub.

This will go a lot farther than saying, "I'm ready," or "I need to make more money."

Show them you are ready to lead and manage by getting some experience doing just that, and then leverage it into the position you want.

Then when you really become a manager the real challenge starts. More pressure, more reward. Make sure you want the responsibility.

You may not want to do this with your current employer because boat rocking can get one fired.

But, you could do this: study your company, or other company's that you target and want to work for and write a report showcasing how they could make more money and/or save more money. Perhaps in one specific department. Then, use this report instead of a resume to get hired in some capacity. Perhaps a higher level management position than you think you could get now. And, you submit this well written report to someone pretty high up in the company: VP, CEO, President, Owner, Department manager....(not the person you might be replacing.)

Dan

You can go into management if you start your own business and hire employees. Do you really want to have a boss to report to?

You do see the irony of posting that statement in the WF bar where we come to blow off business, right?

One easy way to show your pro-active is to train the new guys.

I don't know how IT orgs in the private sector works, but wherever I went, usually no one really wanted to take care of the trainees.

Since your senior, they will do whatever you want, so you have some freedom to implement your ideas.

After more than 40 years self-employed with employees, I can say there is a lot more to management than these. Management includes understanding how the business works, a working knowledge knowledge of HR, and the people skills to motivate employees. And it is a learned skill.

Blunt is different than direct. Direct is good, however to positively motivate others, blunt doesn't work.

Businesses that promote from within, often provide management training.

A fellow I've been friends with for more than 20 years was working as a server in a large hotel chain's restaurant when I first met him. He spoke with management about ways he could move into management, and the hotel (a Westin) agreed to put him through management training.

The hotel sent him to classes over the course of the next year, and he moved into management, because they taught him specifically how to work people effectively. A few years later he moved into an upper management position at another business.

:-Don

Good. You have had some experience at doing management. That is half the battle.

You're motivated, which means you can learn on your own. Books, books, and more books. Start at your local library. Any books you get from the library, books which you realize will be beneficial to your career moves, go purchase at a book store or online.

Grab a highlighter and start marking up your copy of the book. Treat it as if it were a school textbook, and write out the most helpful points from those you have underlined. Doing so will start putting the information more solidly into your brain.

If you were to take any college course on management, this is exactly what you would be doing with the course textbook. You can do this on your own, without taking classes.

Search Amazon to find books you might want to read at the library. Buy Kindle books about management. Begin to acquire your own personal library of management material.

Look at
AMA - American Management Association Management Training ...

There is a wealth of information on their website! And they also promote local seminars held in large cities. You may even want to travel to some of these. Think of it the way we think of going to an Internet Marketing seminar, except there won't be much, if any, selling at an AMA event.

I was a member of the AMA, some years ago, and went to a couple of their seminars.

This is a good start.

:-Don

After reading your responses to some excellent advice, I really feel like laying into you, but I remember what I was like in my early twenties and doing so would be hypocritical.

Kay noted a very important point: you are way too into your needs and wants and, unfortunately, you don't have the education and experience to call your own shots yet.

Spin your perspective around and your company will not only promote you, but they'll pay you accordingly, as well. If you make it a goal to improve your company, specifically by finding ways to improve revenue and decrease expenses, your employer would be astronomically stupid not to attempt to keep you. If not, you move on to the highest bidder.

Right now, worry about developing a track record of success. It's that track record that will get you what you want.

Or start your own business. You can start a side business for very low or no capital. Saying you can't is a cop out -- unless there's a clause in your employment agreement dictating no moonlighting. If so, find another job.

Look, I get where you're coming from ideologically. Unfortunately, ideology and the real world can be mortal enemies.

Base on what I read you could do what you wanted to do, you have the right skills and attitude you just have to hone it so that you could be efficient

Consider this,Troll.

You will never manage anyone until you mature.

Recognition of the "concept" of authority?

Like actually earning your pay and contributing to the betterment of the company you work for?

Nah, not your style.

You would rather sabotage your superiors, that way, you suppress your own insecurity.

Keep believing you have all the answers, thinking you can achieve everything without any effort,feigning humility and cooperation, only to deceive.

And ,therein lies the sad reality.

Perhaps my original post did not register with you, let me try again.

Congratulations, Know it all.

You have successfully alienated people here that were genuinely trying to help.

Now, think about your actions here, and the end result.

Don't go away mad, just go away.

Back in the 1990's, IBM was on the brink of bankruptcy and their future was uncertain. They had lost their grip on the software industry after the sale of DOS, and lost their grip on the hardware industry due to the emergence of lower cost hardware manufacturers like HP, Packard Bell, Compaq, etc. Management couldn't figure out where they went wrong.

It wasn't until a shareholder meeting that one of the shareholders voiced an observation. IBM had a habit of promoting their best employees up the chain, it was one of the reasons they attracted the top talent in their earlier years - people knew they would be able to move up in the company. But this came with a side effect... when you promote your best programmers to management positions, you're leaving the programmers who WEREN'T as good doing the programming. Likewise when you promote your best engineers and marketing strategists, you're leaving the ones who aren't as good doing the engineering and marketing. Product quality suffered, and that gap created the opportunity for competitors to move in and capitalize on their temporary weakness.

IBM learned from their mistake and was able to turn it around, and it's a case that's been studied by every successful CEO I've ever met. Ever wonder why people always scratch their heads wondering why companies that used to promote from within don't anymore? This is why. Because the higher-ups don't want to promote the best people ... they want the people who are best at their jobs to continue to do them, and are more apt to hire someone outside with an established management track record than promote the best and brightest within a department.

So - now that you have some insight into how your managers (and their superiors) are viewing their workforce, you can use this knowledge to your advantage by executing the following strategy:

1. Stop being a rockstar at your job - it's keeping you exactly where you are. Do the job you're being paid to do, following the procedures laid out by your management team - nothing less, nothing more.

2. Stop trying to impress your CURRENT employer - statistically speaking, if you want to move up you have no future there. Whether you agree or disagree with me on this, PRETEND it's the case.

3. Take LEADERSHIP initiative at every opportunity and don't wait for it to be offered to you. Offer to head up projects, even though you know it won't advance your career. Offer strategies, even if you know someone higher up will get the credit for them. Take EVERY opportunity, inside and outside of the company, to be a leader in everything you do even if no one notices.

4. TALK about these things - share your best strategies through social media and LinkedIn. It doesn't matter if no one is looking TODAY - they'll still be out there the day someone is.

5. Understand that arrogance will get you nowhere. If you think a company's policy is stupid, there's a right and a wrong way to handle it. If you have a better idea, you should HUMBLY and PRIVATELY meet with your superior to discuss it. "I was thinking that we might be more efficient if we did it this way instead" will get you a lot further than "this policy is stupid, we should do it like this"

Once you've done these things, seek employment elsewhere and put in for management positions. Reference THESE THINGS - not your day to day tasks - on your resume. Because when you're standing in MY office waiting for an interview, I don't care about your menial cubicle job and how great you were at it unless I need to hire someone great for a menial cubicle job. When I hire a manager, I want to hire a leader - and it's those examples of leadership, whether it was your "job" or not, that will impress me. And when my team does their due diligence and looks you up on Facebook and LinkedIn, discovering a "public persona" that matches the resume will further reinforce my opinion that you're the right guy for the job.

And one more tip ... EVERY employer is looking at your Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn profiles before they hire you. Every single one. Am I going to see a profile that matches the LEADER your resume has made you out to be, or a kid holding a red cup? Don't think your privacy settings are protecting your jackass Facebook posts from being seen... you never know who I know. If you live in my city, chances are I know SOMEONE who knows you. Maybe they're a better friend to me or my HR director than they are to you. And when I ask them "So what do you know about a_dude" are they going to say "He's a slacker" or "he cheats on his girlfriend" or "Man, that dude can party!" ... or are they going to say he's a really smart guy?

Think about it. Presentation is everything.

To win at anything, you need a plan. This should be your plan.