Is your Career Insured

Last week I was at the Car Dealer to buy a Toyota Camry (Desi car) for my friend, We almost spent 5 hours to decide on the CAR , options , pricing and then came the tricky part of meeting with the finance department, its like an Exit Interview.
Where we want to ensure that everything about the new Car is good and on the other side , finance guy is trying to sell options to us like
  • Appearance package – to have coat on your car for Stains,
  • GAP Insurance – This is interesting one, if you buy a car for 0 down and if the car gets totalled next day, the difference between the price and the value paid by insurance is covered,
  • Bumper to Bumper Warranty for 7yrs beyond the regular 36month guarantee.
All of them you feel are so important and there is a time factor, if you decline you will not be able to avail it later, also my friend did  not even Budgeted for this expense. Since we were buying at 0 down, we ended up buying the GAP insurance, ofcourse its a new car, who wants the bird droppings, stains so we also took the Appearance Package. An addition of almost $1500, but was packaged nicely as a part of loan, with a soothing effect that it was only $37/month extra, for reducing the payment , instead of 60months , they stretched to 63months.
I was thinking, if a person can buy $1500 worth of protection for his $20K  car, with just 15min of convincing. It should be of very High Importance.
What should we be doing for our Career then. When I say Career , I mean You have to keep you current Job, get promotions, rise up the ladder, when in Job Market make sure you latest Skillsets. Infact, you should be positioned such a way, that Job Offers come to you without even soliciting for it.
How much should we spend on it. If you going to earn $1Million in next 10yrs, its but logical that we ensure that we have a effortless journey. We should have a GAP Insurance, which will upgrade our skillsets.
You got my point, We should be actively engaged to ensure we have that Career Insurance, Instead most of us have none, we only learn what Employer wants us to learn and have many reasons not able to learn more. From above hypothesis  the reasons can be
  • We dont think , Our Career is Value, part of the reason is , Its not tangible like NEW Car
  • Its not easy to quantify on how much you are loosing. Where as, In realty, keep your current job is one thing and moving ahead in ladder is more of a Conscious effort.
  • We dont have Time to think at all.
  • We feel, I have spent enough in my College and I am done. Have no budget assigned to it instead have a feeling that its not the best use of Money. What ever the trainings are needed, Employer should give. I will not spend a dime from my pocket. Realty is , its exactly the Opposite.
I cannot stress more, YOUR CAREER IS ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT ASPECTS YOU SHOULD FOCUS ON ACTIVELY, PERIOD. You need to think, on where you should be in next 2 years, technically, position wise and make conscious efforts for the same.
Bad way to approach the above problem would be, studying only for Interview (which you forget when Interview is done, and does not add any long term value)
Below is the list of things will help us in that direction, remember this is your GAP Insurance,
  • Assign yourself to the minimum 3% of your annual Income for your Career Upgrade. Learn from the experts, Attend conferences in you area like for Java we have DevNexus and NFJS in Atlanta and US cities
  • Join the Local Meetup Groups (Most of them are FREE to nominal value.  If you in Atlanta, I want you to join  www.meetup.com/my-ajcp)
  • If You are an expert, start presenting in those groups, It will help you build your Network.
  • Join Open source projects
  • Learn something new, a new Language, framework, it will make you skills laser sharp and help easier learning of the new technologies.

Would love to hear your views on it
Wishing the Best

Orginally published on careerinjava.com Feb 2013

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