New Year Career Aspirations?

Society Business and Career
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With the new year just begun, I’m wondering if anyone else has had the time to reflect upon things they did and did not do well over the last year and how you would like to change yourself in the new year with respect to your career.

I for one have had a rather uproductive and hollow year… with a change of jobs and cities and some family related issues, I feel like I underutilized my own abilities this past year – esp. the last six months.

This year happens to be especially important for me for several reasons – I plan to finally get my Ph.D. completed and also excel at my new job.

Towards this… two main objectives (“resolutions”) that I intend to keep this year are as follows:

1- Breaking down each of my professionally desired milestones into smaller, short-term, immediate steps – so that I can actually get started on that path. This last year, I’ve tried to tackle projects on a grand scale in a rather ostentatious manner… and this hasn’t really worked for me.

2- At my new job, I intend to develop a personal brand… I need to take an inventory of how I want to be viewed by my colleagues and my employer… and I need to work towards building on that brand.

I know the above two things sound rather generic but it just so happens that sometimes we lose sight of the simplest things that can help steer us in the right direction. I feel that I had lost that direction in the last six months and I intend to regain that through the above two objectives.

Share your thoughts on the changes you’d like to bring about or goals you’d like to achieve over the course of the year.

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Re: New Year Career Aspirations?

good post Umar

Last year was a pretty good year for me. in 8 months I grew my role from the responsibility of north american marketing focusing on product launches to global responsibility, market leadership strategy globally, and tpowards the end of the year product portfolio and pricing responsibility globally.

1a) execute- I did a petty good job on strategy and new concepts at work last year, now I need to execute them well.

1b) collaborate- I am being pulled into directions where different groups want me to be their sounding board or involved aware of their work as some of it will eventually come to us. continue doing that.

2) review personal brand..really treat it as I treat any of my marketing projects. May even use some outside expert.

3) utilize my mentors more, right now they are just sounding boards

4) more networking through industry organizations, more active in industry orgs

5) start my blog, website which has been languishing for too long

Umar as far as personal brand, i picked up a book called You inc, its not what I expected it to be, but a good read.

would love to hear from others how they developed their pesonal brands.

I mean the idea is the exact same as a product, whats the brand promise, whats the tag line, how does the positioning etc relate to the messaging, and then what needs to be done if u need to move the brand from one category to another etc/

* ~*~ GS (Cafe) Kay Guppies / Guppans ~*~
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Re: New Year Career Aspirations?

:hayaa: n i thought having a job was ez…:frowning:
u ppl scare me even before i enter into the corporate world:(

This year I will give up____
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Re: New Year Career Aspirations?

sara maybe we open a diff thread on concerns and questions of ppl just entering corporate world.

its not that bad really, the right company and right boss is critical. more people leave their jobs due to a bad boss than anything.

then its up to you, what u want to do, find right mentors along the way, get right experience, find right opportunities.

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Re: New Year Career Aspirations?

My year was jumbled. As at the end of 2006 i resigned from my previous job (a good one in term of salary in pakistan) as well as the company being a multinational. But after spending few stressful months i decided to resign. I wasnt doing what i wanted to and thus, not enjoying.

The decision was not welcomed by most in family as well as friends, and after a while i had to question myself too if i actually did a mistake. Bcos i was having a difficulty finding a new job, both in terms of earning and the industry i wanted to be attached to. This was, effecting my wish to enroll for the phd as well. After some stressful months, decided to go on vocation (on dad’s suggestion of having a break and just forget everything for a while). I picked far east on middle east which were two choices for me at that time.

during my visits to colleges and universities there i received a offer as a lecturer for undergraduates, which i accepted. So here i m.

I am not planing much in 2008, but hopefully, if things go right, i ll work on my proposal and get enrolled, but thats what i m saying from past 2 years now :bummer:

:bravo:

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Re: New Year Career Aspirations?

johnny so u are not in pak anymore. a little confused after reading your post

PTV Plays since 27 Nov-1964
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Re: New Year Career Aspirations?

I think this warrants a separate discussion on personal b r a n d i n g... I went through this exercise last year while applying for jobs. Although it wasn't an involved effort by any means, I got my hands on a few really good sources of information that helped me craft a personal brand that I see as a good starting point for myself.

I'll share this info and more in that thread.

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Re: New Year Career Aspirations?

Good luck on the new job Jony… wut’re you teaching?

Let me know if you need any help with the proposal… and I can offer some tips about the admission process and prospective programs as well - things I wish I would have known before getting into a program :bummer:

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Re: New Year Career Aspirations?

Umar bhai, very good thread. any experience in new course proposals and its process?
thanks,
Dushwari

Learning to stitch ...... years later!
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Re: New Year Career Aspirations?

X2: No i m not in Pakistan. I am in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia at the moment.

Umar, programming fundamentals, introduction to .net technologies, problem solving concepts. … for proposal…right now i m looking for the most difficult part, the ‘start’ the ‘topic’ :smiley: … and ofcourse all the tips and ideas r always most welcomed

:bravo:

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Re: New Year Career Aspirations?

Over the last couple of years, I transitioned from ERP world into the business intelligence world. I have narrowed down my business intelligence career into financial analytics and strategic finance. I plan to continue acquiring more knowledge on Financial Business systems.

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Re: New Year Career Aspirations?

Fayz

ahhh BI, so Tibco, Cognos and all that jazz, Interesting area right now with all the acquisitions, the major ERP players realized what is going on and how they are falling short, the acquisition activity has been pretty amazing in this area.

I have been talking to analysts at AMR, Gartner and Aberdeen etc on the developments. There is an Aberdeen research paper on operational BI coming out soon, def read that because it starts hitting on the key needs.

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Re: New Year Career Aspirations?

hmm... I'm actually planning on getting into the BI side as well... currently in the supply chain area. Fawz, what ERP's were you playing with? Mine has pretty much been generic supply chain and logistics and warehouse related projects.... ERP wise, I've mainly been involved with SAP... and thats where I want to go, get out of SAP SCM and APO and into BI, as APO DP uses the BI technology anyway, I'm already pretty familiar with all the basic stuff, but want to polish my skills a bit more. I think as organizations become more aware, BI is definitely the way to go, because its here to stay, and is relevant to any and every business.

what is your age
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Re: New Year Career Aspirations?

Kakay, I remember the time when you were debating between MBA versus pursuing SAP specific studies. I'm glad things have worked out for you. One needs a lifetime to understand let alone implement all modules of the SAP monster. Currently, I interact with FI and CO modules but at a very high level. Most of my projects entail Budgeting/Forecasting and company wide consolidations for financial reporting. During the ERP project days, I was more involved with Inventory management and manufacturing modules for midsize companies. The ERP products were mostly Canadian brands customized to death.

Pir saab, the rivalry between BI vendors is at it's peak these days. Hyperion was recently acquired by Oracle and SAP/Business Objects deal is coming to a close soon. I'll keep an eye on Aberdeen's paper.

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Re: New Year Career Aspirations?

and Cognos by IBM, the field is indeed hot. still way too many technologists rather than business folks in the arena though. teh talk gets on data, data and more data.

Recently I had a rather interesting debate with a senior level Oracle BI guy and analyst from Gartner who were talking about demand siugnal repositories and their impact on BI, with frequency of the demand signal being of optinal importance. My only question to them was when you speak of frequent demand signals, how frequent is good enough, and..could the recipient of this information really be able to do anything with that info.

I am working on a white paper which will be published in 2 months which looks at it from a usage perspective. will send u the link when its up.

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Re: New Year Career Aspirations?

Kaka and Fayz, how many years have you been with SAP?

I just started out this year (3 days ago to be precise) and I must admit, I don’t know a damn thing abt SAP (they do have great canteens though), :cb: !

One of my seniors were mentioning that the coming years could be defining for SAP. Either it will become the second best to Microsoft, in terms of success, or it will fail miserably. What do you guys say about this?

Good post Umar! Allah aapko kamiab karey. Ummm PhD.., good luck with that!

Spent 7 years with a research institute and couldn’t even get started with mine, and now want to kick start the process parallel to my job with SAP. Very very unrealistic goal! Especially for a would-be consultant, theek keh raha huN Fayz and Kaka sahab?

But on the brighter side, my German colleague has achieved exactly that!

To aapkay khyal maiN what should I do? Proceed with the idea or just keep it a dream?

Last sentence someone said to u
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Re: New Year Career Aspirations?

Danday wala, what do you mean by 'started out this year'... what exactly are you planning to do? What exactly are you doing? what background do you have relating to specific functional areas?

I dont really agree with your seniors comments.. I think SAP is already HUGE enough, and more than enough market penetration to not 'fail miserably'. If anything, SAP is aggresively trying to break into the small to medium business markets now and also concentrating alot more on the value adding areas like CRM and BI etc.

Fayz, yeah its been a busy few years for me. A couple of implementations, plus a few presales implementations and demos, some functional consultant and production support work within the SAP APO (SCM) and BI. Some other smaller non ERP projects related to supply chain and logistics and inventory management etc.

Did you have an accounting background before getting into the FI-CO related reporting? Would've taken some getting used to, if you've transitioned from the supply chain/logistics/inventory/manufacturing area to the FI-CO area....

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Re: New Year Career Aspirations?

I meant to say that I joined SAP (SAP SI, to be precise) from the beginning of this year. Within EMEA focus group Risk management, they have started a new department called "Fachbereich Security" and I'll be working there as a consultant. I have a background in IT Security.

Yeah I know, they told us about the focus on small and mid size markets during the introduction session. Our senior just wanted us to motivate I guess. He gave us few examples, the companies which were ranked as #2 in the world are no where to be seen today. And also that in mid 90s SAP was almost bankrupt! They are aggressively trying to break into small and mid size business, but so are many of SAP's competitors!

I admit, my knowledge of SAP is very limited, therefore I'll be finding out during the next few weeks what exactly my duties are going to be. For that purpose, they have arranged a mentor and a whole spectrum of on-job training program for me, so lets see.

This acronym world of SAP drives me crazy!

You are most probably with the region "Americas" , right?

PS. Ah, are we getting off-topic here? :D

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Re: New Year Career Aspirations?

yaaar apnay senior say pooch laina keh coke or pepsi mein say #1 or #2 kon hai?
honda or tpoyota meion say # or #2 kon hai (in quality)
being #2 is not a bad thing, if only #1 companies survived we would not have so many consumer elctronics, fashion, powerhouses.

for some corporate rah rah it is a good speech fodder but not quite accurate.

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Re: New Year Career Aspirations?

Hey danday_wala... good luck at SAP!

What type of research were you involved with? and I take it that you're in Europe?

Re: pursuing a Ph.D. along with a regular job - I've kinda been doing just that (alternating my jobs between management consulting, academic teaching, and industrial research). I've kept a full-time job while pursuing studies - and I'm just finishing my 4th year with hopes of finishing up my dissertation write-up this year inshaAllah.

It's doable but I certainly won't recommend it. A Ph.D. in itself is more than a full-time job... and if I could do it without worrying about a job, I would! However, you need a good supervisor who is willing to be flexible with timelines and milestones.

If you're in Europe, things may be a little easier though. Most programs typically require 3 years on a full-time basis and there are fewer coursework and examination requirements which definitely helps!