9 Career-Limiting Blunders You Should Avoid at all Cost

By Dorcas Karuana,
“Be happy that you even have a job,” is the common phrase we hear all over the place regardless of industry or job function. Expressing your dissatisfaction in a job sometimes gives some people the impression that you are not grateful for the paycheck that an unemployed person does not have at the moment. It’s not such a bad thing to want employment satisfaction. But the big issue is that most of us immediately go into a status quo and lack career development plan. We just want to work in exchange for the security of a steady pay check.

There is one important thing you need to understand about your career: there are good mistakes and bad ones. There are some mistakes you should make because you’ll learn from them and move on – they’re not career-limiting. Then there are mistakes that you should avoid like the plague because they are career limiting. They’ll forever keep you from fulfilling your potential. They’ll make you regretful, bitter, resentful and miserable.

It is all too easy to destroy your career if you make some of these mistakes.

1. Sticking with a loser company. Companies are like airplanes; you’re not the pilot and you didn’t design or build the plane. You just go where it goes. All too often, that’s nowhere. You get complacent and, next thing you know, your career has flat-lined and your time has run out. You need to think of employers as business opportunities; you want as many as possible to be winners.

2. Not putting yourself out there. The vast majority of people find a comfort zone and settle in there. They don’t aggressively manage their careers. That’s fine, as long as you don’t mind waking up 10 years later in the same job. If you want to get ahead, you need to network, schmooze and open yourself up to opportunities.

3. Trusting that your employer will take care of you. There are so many things wrong with that sentence. Don’t trust your career to anyone but you. Your employer most likely sees you as an expendable, replaceable, at-will worker. You know, trust is built on two things in corporate America: a pattern of behavior and legal agreements. And I wouldn’t trust the former without the latter.

4. Thinking you’re entitled to more. You’re entitled to what you earn. No more, no less. If you expect more than you work for and deserve, you’ll get nowhere and end up blaming everyone but the one person who could have done something about it: you. That’s just how it is, like it or not.

5. Not taking enough risks. No risk, no reward. The only real risk is not taking any. The poet Robert Browning said, “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp.” Pick your phrase and own it. You need to take risks. And if you take more when you’re younger, you won’t have to take so many when you’re older.

6. Making work about you. Business is about business; it’s not about you. It’s not about what you want, what you like, what you think of your boss or your coworkers, or even your principles. If you don’t like where you are and what you’re doing, quit and go somewhere else. It’s a free country. Or start your own business. Then you can do whatever you want.

7. Thinking it’s not about the money. It’s absolutely true that you should do what you’re passionate about; that is the best way to achieve success. Just don’t make believe money doesn’t count.

8. Getting stuck behind a “going-nowhere” boss. Maybe your boss doesn’t like you. Maybe he’s a loser, his boss is a loser, or the whole division is going nowhere. Whatever the reason, don’t waste years trapped in a cubicle cage by a loser boss. Find another job where you’ve got a chance of going somewhere.

9. Being too impatient. When you’re reasonably certain the writing’s on the wall and it’s time for a change, do it. Otherwise, don’t get impatient and expect everything to happen all at once. Success is like a stock market chart. It goes up and down but, over time, the trajectory is hopefully up and to the right. Life is long and so is your career. It’s a long distance run, not a sprint. Mixed metaphors, I know, but they’re true, nonetheless.

Dorcas is the Head of Recruitment at Corporate Manpower East Africa.
Email: dorcas(at)corporatemanpower.co.ke

Let us know in the comments what mistakes you made in your career and what were the lessons you learned.