Appearance: Cynthia, female, 3 1 year old, secretary of the Chinese general manager of a foreign company.
Cynthia graduated from a famous university in the north, majoring in English. I have been working as a secretary in Shanghai since graduation. Although the company is well paid, there is always a sense of urgency. She doesn't want to be a secretary all her life, but after five or six years, she still can't find any promotion opportunities. Seeing that her former classmates were promoted and married, she was still single and worried. She thought about changing careers, but found that she had no other skills except administrative affairs. Seeing that she has reached the age of 30, Cynthia doesn't know how much youth she still has to wait for. Without a career direction, she walked into Xiangyang career counseling room, hoping to get the help of CCDM career planner.
Cynthia's case is very representative, which reflects the inner confusion of the "30-year-old female secretary". Most of them hope that they can have a broader development platform. However, suffering cannot be clearly defined according to its own characteristics, and future career development is indeed worrying. CCDM career planners concluded that their confusion revealed three characteristics of the secretarial profession.
First, the potential age limit.
Although some people have been engaged in the profession of secretary all their lives, compared with most people, secretaries are still younger. Looking at the secretarial posts in today's enterprises, 80% are occupied by young women. This is related to the care and consideration that a secretary needs. Young people choose this profession because it is easy to enter this industry, and because they hope to use it as a platform to prepare for future development. Once a secretary has worked for more than five years, there is no promotion opportunity in the future, which will inevitably lead to confusion and confusion. Just like Cynthia in this case, age is a wake-up call for her.
Second, lack of professional skills.
Although the requirements of modern society for secretaries are constantly improving, after all, secretaries have mastered general skills such as dealing with daily affairs and personnel communication, and have no professional knowledge background. Once you want to change careers, it's very difficult. This is also one of Cynthia's troubles. I majored in English in college, but she found that many young new employees in the company were excellent in English and had other professional backgrounds, which made Cynthia envious. On the other hand, Cynthia herself, because her major is no longer her advantage, she can't accumulate experience in other fields in her daily work, so her advantage and ability are deteriorating, which is also the common dilemma of many "30-year-old secretaries".
Third, it is easy to be replaced by newcomers.
Cynthia: "shine on you is better than blue! The young people in the company are really good, and my position is easy to cut in, which makes me under great pressure. " Cynthia's words reflected the secretary's heart. If you don't pay attention to the cultivation of knowledge and professional promotion in the process of secretarial work, you will only lose your advantage in social competition and lead to the degradation of academic qualifications. The workplace is like sailing against the current, if you don't advance, you will retreat! When the "30-year-old female secretary" lost the advantages of age and ability, troubles followed. It is a social necessity that the competition is fierce and new people come forth in large numbers, and the social environment cannot be changed. For everyone in the workplace, improving their ability as much as possible is the only solution.
As the scroll says, "All problems, depression and sadness are the gods of opportunity in disguise." Dale Hong, the chief career planner of Xiangyang Career, pointed out that the concept of "opportunity" is also true in the field of career planning. Every confusion and distress actually indicates a new beginning of your career, just depending on how you grasp it.
The following are three major steps for the career success of a 30-year-old female secretary, which are summarized through years of consulting cases and professional theories of career planning:
The first step: establish the future development direction in advance.
Because of the particularity of secretarial profession, once over 30 years old, it is easy to face many crises, especially female friends. Then the urgent task is to establish the future development direction in time. The career planner of Xiangyang Career CCDM pointed out that the fundamental reason why many "30-year-old female secretaries" who came to consult were confused was that they did not prepare for their future career development in advance. Career direction is the basis of career planning and development, which can guide individuals to achieve their career goals quickly and avoid detours.
Step 2: Charge in time to lay the foundation for the future.
The entry threshold for secretaries is low, in other words, most secretaries do not have obvious core competitiveness. This is the fundamental reason why secretary education has gone from bad to worse for many years. Bacon said that knowledge is power. In the workplace, we can understand that "knowledge is the road to career development." If you want to get out of this dilemma, you must recharge your batteries in time, train yourself constantly, arm your mind with more professional knowledge and keep pace with the times.
Step 3: Pay attention to the accumulation of contacts at work.
Although the job of secretary is not a position with huge development space, there is an advantage hidden in this job: the opportunity to deal with people. Only managers and above can be equipped with secretaries in enterprises, and most of the people who work with them hold important positions. So the secretary, as the spokesperson of the leaders, has an excellent opportunity to communicate with these people. Attaching importance to these interpersonal resources means mastering the superior resources of secretarial posts. They may become your partners tomorrow.
How to grasp these personal resources? How to make good use of these resources is one of the problems that plague most secretaries.
First of all, we should have the concept of equality in our work and pay more attention to sympathy for the disadvantaged groups. It is an intellectual charity act that follows the laws of the world and people's hearts. It will often produce centripetal effect in the crowd, enhance our influence, and its "network resources" will also be effectively used by you, making you a respected and admired person.
Secondly, we should guide our behavior by "helping others". Since ancient times, the Chinese nation has been inheriting the traditional communicative psychology and complex of gratitude and kindness, and "the kindness of dripping water should be reciprocated by the spring" is regarded as the moral code of conduct by the world. Therefore, using this traditional communication concept to explore and use "network resources" still has a strong inertia effect and will make your life brilliant.
Finally, carefully sort out and divide the business cards and contact information collected on weekdays, so that these contacts can be fully utilized at critical moments. Most importantly, in the process of talking with them, you are likely to get valuable information and become an opportunity for your career development.
The pressure and confusion of "30 female secretaries" come not only from the position itself, but also from the family. They will consider more practical problems, so they urgently need professional advice and guidance. In fact, in the successful cases of contacting Xiangyang career consulting institutions, there is a common feature, that is, the career positioning is accurate and the career planning system is feasible. On the basis of clear career orientation, relying on your long-term career development plan, it will be easy to absorb a lot of professional knowledge, cultivate professional skills and break through the 30-year-old bottleneck in your chosen industry. As a career planner of CCDM in Xiangyang, I hope to help the 30-year-old female secretary in trouble open a career door to happiness and success through her own career ideas.
Dale Hong: Chief Career Planner, General Manager of Shanghai Xiangyang Career Management Consulting Co., Ltd., Secretary General of CCDM China Professional Planner Certification and Training Expert Group. American APT Psychological Type Association and APP Australian Psychologists Publishing House MBTI certified testers. Engaged in research, consultation and training of career management and development for a long time to help enterprises and individuals gain greater competitive advantages.