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MSDN Blogs > A CRM Riff > Growing Your Career

Growing Your Career

Growing Your Career

19 Apr 2006 4:08 PM
  • Comments 5

I happened to be talking to a coworker about 'Growing Your Career'. It seems this has been the buzzword to describe an active participation by an individual to find the perfect job. Growing your career is more than just networking, smoozing with the people who are the movers and shakers.

It's more about trying to decide what you really want to be doing five or ten years out from now. If you could be doing whatever you wanted to and economics didn't play into this situation what would you want to do? It's amazing to me how many people would not be doing what they are currently doing to bring home the bacon. I've asked this questions to most of my directs and they want to be a musician, teacher, or artist. Or they want to be doing things like running a pet shelter or an organic greenhouse.

I recently moved from being a documentation manager for seven years to my current position as a site manager for the Microsoft Dynamics CRM team. You see, for the last five years I've been spending my free time as a forums admin on the Sax on the Web site. With over 10,000 readers, many from overseas, I was combining my love of music and more specifically playing the saxophone with my love of all things Internet.

About a year ago, I started toying with the idea of trying to find work in that space. Where could I play with the newest innovations in the WWW and get paid for the fun of doing it. Well, I actually started looking last Fall and ended up here. I actually turned down a couple of opportunities because either the team wasn't up to snuff or the people on the team were too 'interesting'.

How do you really want to make a living and what are you willing to do to get there?

Comments
  • 20 Apr 2006 4:16 AM
    I think you make a great point.  What I've noticed in my very short career in this industry, is that putting forth a little more effort results in some very big gains.  The rate of change in the industry has reached a level that it's truly possible to get in on the ground floor of the Next Big Thing without any trouble at all.

    Windows Vista, God-willing, will be out in a year, and that brings with it a host of new technologies that will need to be understood and mastered by programmers.  By jumping the gun just a little, anyone can be the expert that everyone turns to.

    The industry is much smaller than it appears, I think.  I've seen stellar engineers snatched up by competitors, and I've seen similar stellar engineers left behind.  The primary difference is the level of visibility that they had in the industry, or on a smaller scale, the immediate customers.

    With the internet nowadays allowing anyone to add their voice, those who do so consistently and helpfully raise their visibility far past levels previously achievable.

    Even this comment does its part to raise my visibility (which would be a good thing if I had anything worth being visible ;-)  With the right kind of career planning and focus on achieving those plans, writing your own ticket is just a matter of time.
  • Jason Haley
    20 Apr 2006 6:47 AM
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