Six Career Secrets You Won't Learn in School

As I've said before, your career is your most valuable financial asset, offering you many financial benefits. You can make the most of it by getting a college degree and managing your career to its full potential. Doing this well can earn you millions of dollars in extra income throughout your lifetime.

At Free Money Finance, I regularly run articles that suggest how you can make the most of your career. Here's another really good one to add to that list -- a piece on six career secrets you won't learn in school from Career Builder. Their advice:

• Develop a marketable corporate persona
• Establish profitable relationships
• Master transferable skills like goal setting, effective communication and time management
• Stay motivated despite trying circumstances
• Get people to cooperate
• Be proactive about your career growth

A few comments:

1. This is good advice. In my 18 years in business, I can say from experience that all six of these "secrets" are needed in the workforce if you want to be successful and distinguish yourself from the pack.

2. There's a BIG difference between what it takes to be successful in college and what it takes to be successful in the working world. In fact, my most valuable skills in college were the ones that were required to do well at school -- time management, discipline, focus, communication, etc. -- not necessarily the learning itself. That's why I am of the opinion that work experience trumps education (after you get your first job -- which, of course, college helps you to get).

3. I've suggested several ways to make the most out of your career. Here are some of the ideas I've offered:

• How to Get Your Career Off to a Great (or at Least Good) Start

• 10 Ways to Get a Promotion

• Do's and Don'ts of Quitting Your Job

• One Way to Find a Career that You'll Love

Comments

[Joe F]

All good advice, but I would hesitate to say that work experience trumps education. Instead I think of education as a necessary foundation for work experience. I'm a software developer and have worked with many people with no education in the field (common in software work), they "learned as they went". I give those people credit, but I can always tell the difference between the developers with the education vs. the developers without the education (leaving aside such geniuses as Bill Gates). Twenty years of experience doesn't count so much if you've been hacking your way through development projects, vs. the educated software developer who follows well-accepted best practices. I'm sure the same is true in other fields: a properly trained police officer will always perform better than an untrained police officer, a carpenter taught the proper ways of the craft will always do better than those without the education, etc. etc. The uneducated worker can get the job done and get the work experience, but generally not at the level of the educated/trained worker. An education is more than just a way to get the first job; it is a foundation of a whole career. And the best professionals never count their education as done, they always pursue additional education in their field.

[Freddie L. Sirmans]

You have a very interesting blog.

[FMF]

I think you're assuming that training ends once you go into the workforce. For instance:

"a properly trained police officer will always perform better than an untrained police officer, a carpenter taught the proper ways of the craft will always do better than those without the education, etc. etc."

Of course this is true, however, an untrained police officer who gets training as part of the job, will do just as well (or better) than one with "book learning". Same for a carpenter. Much more can often be learned by doing than by studying.

In fact, you could argue that much of education has little to do to benefit the actual job a person accepts (for me, I've used a FRACTION of what I studied in the business world -- there's a HUGE difference between what colleges teach and what the "real world" is like).

That said, an education is often required to get you the initial job, so you have to have it. But from there on out, it's performance-based: whoever does the job better, regardless of education, will get ahead.

[Joe F]

Freddie, regarding your comment:

"I think you're assuming that training ends once you go into the workforce"

I think I was very clear in my last sentence: "And the best professionals never count their education as done, they always pursue additional education in their field.". No I am not assuming that "training ends once you go into the workforce", in fact I stated quite the opposite.

When you're talking about hard skills, such as in engineering, software development, or the trades, an education is an invaluable foundation. People that go into these kinds of fields without the proper education, be it college, an academy, or trade school, are, typically, just pretenders.

[FMF]

That comment was actually from me (the person's name is below their comment).

Yes, you said one thing, but seemed to imply another.

My point is: performance is what counts. If one engineer, software developer, etc. does better than another yet has no formal education (or one from a "lesser" college), she/he will be the one that gets ahead.

[Joe F]

Yes very true; my only point is withotu the proper education or training, for those jobs that require hard skills, it is impossible to perform at a high level (unless you are one of those very rare people who could genuinely self-teach the skills; many people fancy themselves as that kind of person, bun in reality very few are).

(My apologies to Freddie! :) )

[Minimum Wage]

College was completely irrelevant in getting my first job. In fact, back in Oct 1992, Money magazine cited a BLS projection that by the year 2000, one in four college grads would be working jobs for which NO education beyond high school was required. (In 1991, Money cited BLS data showing that one in five grads were similarly (under)employed at the time.)

So...college has done nothing for my career. Now I am a boomer with no "career-related" experience. What do I do now?