How To React To Challenges In Your Career

Your career is going to last your whole life, well hopefully anyway, but there is no guarantee that the whole time you will be on a perpetual upwards trajectory. Everyone will face challenges, problems and outright crises during their career. But really it’s how you react to these events rather than the fact that they happen that might say more about you. So let’s take a few examples of the types of difficult events we might be having to navigate in our professional lives and what is the best strategy to come out the other side in a strong position.

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You Are Made Redundant

This is a very difficult thing to have to deal with and especially if redundancy comes unexpectedly as sometimes when businesses are cutting back or are in financial trouble then they hide this fact from the employees and the outside world at large. This is to do with market confidence usually as if word gets out then the stock price falls and they are most likely were hoping the situation would have turned round before anyone ever knew. All of this is of no help to you though as you are out of a job through no fault of your own, keep this in mind for the sake of your own self-confidence. Get back out there as quickly as possible and apply for jobs, use your contacts to see if anyone in the industry has any openings and you’ll soon bounce back.

You’re Fired

This is similar to the situation above but the big difference is that being fired is saying there is an issue with your performance. What to do here is to first assess why you were dismissed and if you feel you have a case for unfair dismissal then make sure you keep any documentary evidence, emails, minutes of meetings etc that supports your case. Also make a timeline of events so that you can point out where the employer didn’t follow procedure or treated you unfairly, do this while it’s still fresh in your mind to take to a lawyer to instigate a tribunal. In the meantime this will make finding another job tricky as there will be a presumption you were in the wrong, but this being the case you can claim for loss of reputation damages from your former employer if you are proven to be in the right, in fact there is quite a bit can be awarded in unfair dismissal cases.

Deciding To Retrain

If you decide to retrain then this can be a challenging thing to do, especially if you are a bit older at the time. You need to carefully plan out how you are going to afford your living expenses while you are studying and look at the application process to make sure you know how to sell yourself as a potential student, make sure you know the application process thoroughly including secondary avenues if you are unsuccessful such as UCAS Extra and clearing. You should also be very careful to ensure that the course you are completing will enhance your earning potential as going back to study is much more costly than doing when you are fresh out of school

Taking A Break For Family Or Personal Reasons

There are so many other things that can get in the way of your career from your personal life, such as illness, bereavement, having children. If anything like the above comes up you will be best to firstly check out what type of leave you are entitled to both legally and contractually through your employer and then you can work out what will be your most likely timeline. You’ll find that most employers will be reasonable or understanding in circumstances such as these and if you are good at keeping in touch with return timescales etc then you should be able to navigate this with ease.