Creating Your Professional Identity

ource Management It is important to understand that career management is more than posting a resume online for individuals. It involves cultivating relationships collaborating with colleagues and adding tangible value to one’s network. For organizations, high levels of employee professionalism and productivity generate efficiencies, insights and success at the group level.

Creating and managing one’s professional reputation and brand in this Internet age can be intimidating for people who haven’t worked in a networked world. But the fast adoption and increasing engagement we see on networking sites globally suggest that people here in India and around the world, are quickly adapting to this new mode of doing business.

Proactively building a strong network is one of the key requirements for such people. Participating on professional groups, asking and answering relevant questions and most importantly sharing your knowledge and insights showcase young talents capabilities and collaborative skills, all of which are important to potential employers, partners and clients.

Passion for your job a desire to be the best and an ability to help others succeed are three vital ingredients of successful careers. And finally, a truly unique characteristic of a good leader is his / her ability to enable others to be successful.

Create a professional identity, connect with other professionals and collaborate with colleagues and partners to solve their business problems.

The preferences vary from person to person and they also keep changing as an employee grows in his /her career. An entry level employee primarily expects monetary benefits and a good supportive work environment that nurtures and grooms them for future roles. Supervisory staff, on the other hand, may expect a competent pay structure wherein they could have more provisions for savings and timely appreciations form the senior management team so that they are encouraged to deliver better. Managerial staff, however, will look beyond monetary and intangible benefits such as appreciation and encouragement and specifically are ken on being bestowed upon with empowered roles i.e. responsibility with authority flexible work options and decision making power with respect to their respective teams.

Cash rewards according to me, would help serve a greater purpose. After all, today’s young professional would like to realize his / her aspirations by experience a distinguished and personal lifestyle of his /her own taste and choice. The feeling of being master of one’s decision on what and where to expend on is a strong motivator without any parallel. Live rich than die rich is how the youth likes to live it.

Employees do look forward to receiving non-monetary benefits as it gives them instant recognition amongst their peer group. The certificates, appreciations letters, etc can be laminated and pinned up on the wall of their respective workstations; this not only motivates them to enhance their productivity levels every single time they look at it while working, but also encourages peers to perform better, in a quest to reach to that level. Cash rewards on the other hand give a momentary high and then, according to me, the enthusiasm slows down and eventually employees start complaining again with the passage of time. Employees always seek instant and timely recognition and appreciation for their work and this need of employees should be fulfilled.

Cash based rewards act as a big pull for at least the first few years for most employees. The reason for this may be attributed to the initial exasperation of getting the best paying job under peer / social pressure. The case is not the same after a few years when employees tend to rationalize their presence in companies based on their interest levels and the value they are able to add to the employer and its bottom line.