Career Management Alliance Blog

In the course of writing our books and columns, we have interviewed multicultural professionals from all walks of life and asked for opinions on a variety of topics, including the characteristics needed for success. We compiled their answers, added our own experiences, and identified twelve factors for a successful career — a career that positively coexists with a fulfilled life, uses your talents and skills to their full potential, and maximizes your opportunities and growth.

You are the Architect of Your Own Destiny

• Life and career success can only be defined by you for you.
• Taking the time to develop your definition of success is essential to achieving career satisfaction.

The following are twelve characteristics you should master to achieve career success:

Know Yourself

• Evaluate your interests, values, knowledge, skills, abilities, contributions, accomplishments, uniqueness and worthiness.
• Understand your cultural programming, if any, and how to transform those gifts into career assets.
• Embrace your attributes, family history and culture.
• Craft your combined attributes into a foundation to launch or grow your career.

Develop a Goal that Inspires You

• Develop a vision of what you want to accomplish in life and your career.
• Arouse your passion and desire to be successful at whatever you do.
• Allow your goals to be courageous to drive your career forward. Your objectives should not be self-limiting.
• Make sure your goals, no matter how large or small, contribute value to others.

Believe in Your Personal Power

• Trust that you are the most important person in your career.
• Embrace your personal power to fuel your career power.
• Activate your career power so you can be proactive in your job search, manage the process and to respond well, rather than react, to the events you cannot control.
• Learn to adapt and transform any self-limiting cultural programming into power centers.

Learn to Dance in Both Worlds

• Recognize that adapting to an employer’s workplace culture is neither selling out nor changing your cultural identity.
• Build a cultural bridge that crosses from one environment to the other that we can walk on and help others to cross.
• Know your culture and share it gently.

Create Opportunities and be Prepared to Take Advantage of Them

• Initiative and networking create opportunities.
• Preparation and practice are often the difference to career success.
• Keep your attitude positive and picture yourself as lucky.
• Use tested strategies to overcome any job search FEARs (False Expectations Appear Real) you may have.

Persistence and Success Go Together

• Remember that it is not the fastest or brightest job seeker but the prepared and judiciously persistent candidate who generates an interview and secures employment.
• Recognize that job search roadblocks are only minor detours that you can find an alternative route, outwit, or avoid altogether.
• Work smarter and use the increasing number of Latino specific, diversity friendly, networking generated and skills focused access doors at employers.

Build Your Personal Career Brand

• If you do not develop a Personal Career Brand, others will label you.
• Paint a compelling picture of who you truly are and the unique promise of value you offer to an employer.
• Building your reputation or Personal Career Brand increases your confidence and job search power.

Make Learning a Life Long Process

• Life-long learning maintains and enhances your employability and upward mobility.
• Continuous professional and personal development improves your career staying power, agility and marketability.
• Your commitment to self-improvement validates an employer’s Return on Investment (ROI) in you.

Be Flexible

• Keep your job search and career options open.
• Be open, adaptable and accommodating to different approaches and opportunities
• Be willing to weigh job offers and career opportunities on how they fit into your career goals and plan. Don’t just look at the money.

Create a Strong Support System

• Grow your Career Board of Directors, a network of a people who will be there for you in the various capacities that aid your job search and career management.
• Nurture your network through maintaining contact, being thankful and giving back where you can.

Know When to Let Go

• Being willing to let go should not be seen as a negative. It is often liberating, empowering, and leads to career success.
• You may have accepted a job that turned out to be the wrong fit or your work situation may sour to the breaking point. Choose to move on.
• Your duties may have changed or you have or a team approach may be more productive requiring that you give up some control. Recognize that it is time to let go.
• Learn to accept your mistakes and use them as learning experiences. Leave them behind.

Remember to Give Back to Your Community

• Appreciate the multicultural professionals who were among the first in their career fields who blazed a trail for you to follow.
• Helping  your colleagues or those coming up behind you opens up even more opportunities for other multicultural professionals.
• Giving back adds to your own value and helps build your Personal Career Brand.
• Leadership and volunteer positions offer professional development opportunities that may not be available in the workplace.

Posted by Murray A. Mann and Rose Mary Bombela-Tobias 

Print This Post