INTERVIEW: Making the most of your career

(Part two)

Career planning is an integral part of personal finance because it has a direct impact on the size of paychecks we bring home. Successful careers don’t just happen because we wish for them, says Augustus J.V. Ferreria, senior executive vice-president of Generali Pilipinas in an interview. Successful careers have to be planned.

Ferreria advised using Stephen Covey’s “begin with the end in mind” motto for career planning. “People normally have a career cycle where every so many years, you want to move. For example, I have a 5-year career cycle,” he says.

The idea is to think about what you want to happen to you every five years and plan accordingly. Say, if you’re in your 20s, you decide that by age 30, you’re a senior manager, vice-president at age 35, senior vice-president at age so and so. You can also decide to be your own boss at age 30. That works too.

“People move towards their dominant thoughts. If a parent tells a child who is walking down the stairs: ‘Mahuhulog ka, mahuhulog ka! (You’re going to fall, you’re going to fall!)’ There’s a high likelihood he will. You instead ask him to hold on to the railings,” Ferreria says.

He explains that our bodies and our minds naturally follow a pattern where we will do things unconsciously that will bring us closer to where we want to go. “There are several people who are happy already with a 15 to 30 paycheck. What most people should do is to plan their careers, by asking themselves where they want to end up,” Ferreria says.

Now, knowing where you really want to go or what you really want to be is not as easy as it sounds. Bigger pay, bigger responsibilities, but how about quality of life? What’s the tag price for the level of stress at the top?

“You better make sure that what you really want is what you really want,” Ferreria warns.

This advice is also crucial in salary negotiations. When you name your price, demand for a package of benefits and sign-on bonuses, have the decency to quit your job when a prospective employer makes the offer.

“Ask yourself, what will make you jump without even thinking about it? A 50 percent increase? A 100 percent increase? You need to put a circle on that amount. What else do you want? What car do you want? What benefits do you want? When you negotiate, negotiate on the basis of strength and not what is given to you,” Ferreria says.

After the courting is over comes the really hard part: performing. “If you want to be at the management committee level, you have to be a multi-dimensional person. You have to know all aspects of operation, finance, information technology etc. Don’t be contented with your specialization. Good thing is, you don’t need to go out there and learn by experience. Learn from others. If you want to think like a Harvard graduate, you don’t have to go to Harvard. Buy books of your favorite Harvard professors. It’s kind of dumb to just rely on experience,” he says.

This do-it-yourself learning may not help you much with stuffy certification-addicted organizations. But who wants to be employed by such? Among headhunters or really good human resource managers, however, it may be an asset.

“When you talk with a potential recruiter, he will know whether you are pulling his leg or not. What they are really looking for is a pearl in a pig sty—someone who has the know-how but is not very expensive, yet,” Ferreria explains.

“You have the knowledge, now you have the opportunity to perform. You kill yourself doing it,” he adds.

Personally, I wouldn’t go as far as literally losing my life for a job. There has got to be quality of life or else a job becomes a pit. Or a cage. But I know what Ferreria means when he talks about “killing yourself” to do your job well. It means the ability to deliver on the expectations. It even means the ability to surprise your employer with the stuff between your ears. After all, if you have to be in the rat race, at least do well and squeeze all the juice out of it. ☺

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