Actuary Firm

By Kenneth Troon

 AUTHOR

Dr. Pauline Joseph DBA MBA

Research from the leisure industry tells us that only 7.5 per cent of members who join a gym actually attend on a regular basis. The remaining 92.5 per cent still pay their annual or monthly membership fees but do not attend regularly.

What is even more interesting is that members who make up this 92.5 per cent have no regular attendance patterns at all. They may attend regularly for a month or two and then lose interest. In six months time they try again for a month or two and then once again lose interest. By contrast the members who make to the 5 per cent who do regularly attend are likely to have consistent exercise plans which they implement methodically and improve gradually.

We receive similar feedback from the hospitality industry. Hotels groups report that those hotels with more extensive leisure and fitness facilities regularly tend to achieve higher bookings than those hotels where such facilities are lacking, but the interesting thing is that we still find that only 12 per cent of hotel residents then actually use these facilities during their stay.

As we mentioned earlier research conducted on Harvard students 20 years after they had graduated showed that 5 per cent were earning more money than the other 95 per cent combined. The only difference was that 5 per cent had clear practical career objectives before studying and were merely using the Harvard programmes as vehicles to identify the correct strategies in order to achieve their career objectives. The remaining students were enrolling upon these programmes because they wanted to achieve a Harvard qualification in the hope that this would somehow lead to greater career prospects.

This latter objective is perfectly reasonable of course and would invariably be achieved to some degree, but the fact that 5 per cent of these students will still achieve more money than the other 95 per cent combined is an enlightening statistic. The difference is nothing more complicated than having a good career management strategy in place and being capable of implementing it.

All of these statistics from various different industries are ultimately really telling us the same story. The majority of people tend to be reactive by nature, in other words, they do things only when they have to and tend to wait for circumstances to jolt them into action. This trend is also reflected within companies too. Some of the biggest global companies can still at times be managed and directed by a reactive management team.

This merely reflects human nature of course. We have seen it so many times where a company has achieved significant growth, secures significant market share, only to squander this achievement by then becoming complacent.

Developing an effective career management strategy is rather like developing an effective diet. Crash diets simply do not work. Indeed they tend to be bad for our health. We may lose some weight in the short-term but it will invariably all go back on when we lose interest and go back to living the way we were before we started the diet. All that we have achieved by doing this is putting our bodies through harmful and unnecessary stress.

Sustainable weight loss is achieved only by introducing a positive and permanent change of lifestyle. The emphasis here of course is on the word permanent.

Studying is very similar. Those students who have not studied since they left university and are considering enrolling upon a programme maybe 10 or 20 years later, will always find it much harder than those students who have always committed 10 per cent of their time towards ongoing self-development ever since leaving university.

So we have learnt that the majority of people are reactive by nature. This is in itself no great surprise, but perhaps the extent of this complacency, as illustrated within the statistics above, is the most disturbing factor. You can to some extent understand complacency creeping in at times with exercise, diet, leisure and studying. We are after all none of us perfect. But it is still somewhat surprising and disturbing that so many of us appear to be complacent with the development of our own careers.

Our career, after all, is about survival and prosperity. It directly affects our quality of life. Money and success do not in themselves buy happiness, but they certainly help. The biggest cause of negative stress is caused by the feeling that you are not in control.

Consequently not being in control of your own career development surely constitutes one of the major causes of stress and inevitably poor health too. Proactive career management is not just about being able to earn more money. It is about achieving a better work-life balance, achieving a better quality of life, spending more time with your family and improving your health. The fact that 95 per cent of the working population are prepared to leave this entirely to chance is amazing.

In reality most individuals only tend to think about their career development when they are forced into doing so by some form of emergent change, such as redundancy, a lack of promotion prospects, a disagreement with a work colleague perhaps, or a sudden recognition of a lack of personal achievement when compared to our peers.

We then tend to put in a disproportionate amount of effort in over a short period of time until the problem we have identified has been resolved quickly and then the sooner we are able to fall back into our comfort zone, commonly referred to as complacency, the happier we will be.

We all know of course whether we should consider ourselves to be part of the 5 per cent proactive category or the 95 per cent reactive category. Recognizing and actually admitting that we are probably in the latter category is for many a challenge in itself. We all like to consider ourselves to be successful and we all consider that we work very hard too, but career management success should be measured solely by our achievements, not by how hard we might work.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Pauline Joseph DBA MBA is a human resource specialist who has 11 years experience in HR and 8 years experience within the executive recruitment industry. She has enjoyed a rewarding career in the board room of market leading global companies within the Fashion, Retail, Leisure and Healthcare industries. She now works within the professional education industry and is a registered Professor at the Academy of Business Strategy.

URL LINKS

Certificate in Career Management Strategy.

Your Network For Job Listings In The Actuary Field

Oil
&
Gas Careers
Which Oil Careers Suit You?

By vikram kuamr

 With oil prices high and only set to rise further, growing numbers of people are turning to the oil industry, looking for oil & gas careers. Previously, this was a relatively little-known industry for people looking to build new careers. Everyone knew how oil was brought up from the bottom of the ocean and what an oil rig was, but nobody seemed to really care about jobs in the industry. All this has changed, however.

If you are interested in oil & gas careers, then you first need to understand the various types of oil careers available in the industry, before you can decide if one or more of them might suit you. The first class oil & gas careers that you might consider is that of laborers. Laborers are the hands of the oil industry, and they deal with most of the jobs that require heavy lifting, such as in the drilling, engineering, and seismic sectors. Being a laborer is typically an entry-level job, with many opportunities for advancement to operations or trades. If you are not highly qualified academically, then this would be the best place for you to start.

Operators comprise the largest class of oil careers within the oil industry. They are typically involved in operation of the various control systems and equipment in other sectors such as drilling and engineering. If you are good with your hands and with machinery, then this is the job for you.

Technicians have to deal with equipment and electrical elements daily. Their job is to install, monitor, service, and fix all of the electronic equipment used in the operations of the petroleum industry. This job requires a higher level of technical skill than the other two mentioned above, and you would definitely benefit from having qualifications in some form of electronic engineering. If, however, you find that you have some skill with electronics and wiring, then you might wish to apply for this class of oil careers.

Of the many oil & gas careers available, that of the geosciences professionals is definitely one of the most interesting. Geosciences professionals are required to have intimate knowledge of physics, biology, and chemistry, and their jobs require that they are able to analyze mineral deposits mined from the earth. They must also be able to predict seismic activity and how oil production work might affect those seismic forces. If you hold academic qualifications in the sciences and are looking to begin in one of the most challenging oil careers, then being a geosciences professional might be just right for you.

Finally, there are the engineers, who number among the most common oil & gas careers in the industry. Engineers can be found working in every department of the petroleum industry, and their main focus is designing, building, and installing equipment for the extraction, transport, and refining of oil and petroleum products. If you are looking for oil careers at the very core of the industry, then you should definitely consider applying to become an engineer.

With all of these oil & gas careers available, you need only decide which one will suit you best and submit your application to the oil company of your choice.

If you are looking for oil careers but are not sure which oil jobs you wish to apply for, then why not visit Careers Oil Gas website and upload your CV? There you will find all the information you require and more!

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