Dealing with early career concerns
Our first professional experiences are challenging, where we often feel pushed to prove ourselves, while we’re not 100% sure about what the path forward is.
This uncertainty affects the most of the professionals’ early career, unfolding second-guessing and eventual frustration.
Since we all suffer from that, I’ve gathered feedback from professionals I admire to summarize our experiences on handling our anxieties during our entry-level experiences. Here are points professionals should focus on to be successful on their first assignments:
- Analyze and understand the problem prior to start planning how to solve it
- Avoid wasting your time with distractions, like social media
- Work actively on your professional image, invest on self-marketing
- Overdeliver only after making sure you delivered what’s necessary
- Formalize important communication to be safe in difficult situations
On the articles below, I described the context behind the main concerns these professionals have faced and strategies to feel more ready for the challenges to come:
- Problem-solving concerns: When you’re afraid of not being able to solve a professional situation by any means (read more)
- Productivity concerns: When you wonder if you’re being less productive than expected, or when you deliver what’s proposed, but you don’t know if people around you think it’s enough (read more)
- Feedback concerns: When you miss other’s perception regarding your performance, or you wonder if your team sees value on your efforts (read more)
- Making mistakes: When you’re too afraid to try, although you’re sure that you can make it right (read more)
As mentioned previously, the experiences and opinions throughout these articles were gathered from professionals I admire, so I’d like to thank them all for helping me with this: Stéphanie Cinelli, Rodrigo Castilho, Murilo Lopes, Emerson Martins, Felipe Barbosa, Bruno Daguis, Wanessa Torres and João Suniga.
Thank you for reading! Feel free to leave a comment!
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