Career Development

What is career development? For some people job is just something you do to earn money. Nothing else. Career? It doesn’t really matter so long as your bank account is never empty.

For me it is different. Career is very important. it gives you a ’satisfaction’ feeling whenever you get promotion…. and better yet a raise

Some people believe that luck is number one in dealing with your ‘promotion’…. Not for me, I believe that personal capabilities and experience is number one, and yet luck is number two…. I’ve seen people with so high qualification end up as staf for his/her entire life. of course that is also because he/she doesnt feel the need of career advancement.

My career development starts from the bottom….

I taught English for children (kindergarten to junior high) for 4 years, in the same time I also worked in a University. I started as a telephone operator… so I answered all phone calls and transfered them to the other dept. and then I was assigned as Academic Consultant, still the same…. answering phone calls, but more to the education explanation and I got to visit some potential high school nearby.

Next stop I work as an administration staf (still in education industry), but the status keeps on changing during the 2 years period, as I did a very good job (ehmm) and got myself promoted to be school coordinator. (the branch manager resigned and i was in charge for mostly anything you can think of). This is a very good (and high) position in that company.

But I did not satisfy…. I moved to another company…. (got fed up with educational institution which makes a lot of money but cannot afford to pay me more). In this company I start as Management Trainee (seems silly but it is just a position created for me as the company never had any MT position before).

I learned a lot there…. especially because it was a garment manufacturing company which people said have the most difficult issues among other industries. I worked in various positions. the first one was Production Supervisor and Industrial Engineer…. (WOW I never thought I would be working in this field.) But it has its ups and downs.

Next I was transferred to IT, and working in a Project. The project was going to launch Oracle Discrete Manufacturing module. I was an Internal Consultant working together with the External Consultant from Starperforma Consulting. Working in project can be quite boring sometimes, the only thing that keeps me going was that my project manager (aka my friend) was counting on me for the success of this project. The project was done in success. after the project I was supposed to go back to production to finish what I’ve started (or so I was told before I joined the project). But turned out things are not what they seemed. I was stuck in IT as IT staff. That was the turning point where I got really really bored. Apparently, my boss didn’t realize it. But my former boss (the project manager) still helped me out. He proposed for a restructuring in IT. The proposal was approved by management, and so the IT manager needed to promote some of the staffs into section heads.

I was promoted to be Oracle Functional Section Head (whatever that means). and so it did make me stay working for that company…… but still I got bored, and so after a year or so I decided to apply for another opening in the same company. The position was Marketing Manager. I managed to convince the Director (now CEO) to hire me as Marketing Manager and I had 1 customer from UK. I really liked the job, but then….

Turns out you can never have what you wanted . Remember all those application letters I sent during the period where I was bored? Well, one of them push through and I was hired in another company. The package (salary) increment is very significant, would be difficult for me to say no….

And so now I’m back to square one. IT staff, but with higher salary. People said it is preferable to be a staf with higher salary rather than manager with lower salary. More money and less responsibility…… who needs anything else????