The most common career mistake most young employees make
Career, Corporate finance
This is the first post in a series called “Managing your career – an introductory series“. The main audience I have in mind are analyst-level employees in corporate finance, but I think many parts can be applied more generally to anyone working in US corporations these days.
I work with a lot of people who are in their first corporate job after college, and I’ve been there myself as well. The most common expectation I’ve heard from them is that someone will manage their career for them, and they look to their manager and leaders in their group to do so.
While it’s true that truly great managers will look out for opportunities for you and push roadblocks away to give recognition to employees who deserve them, the sad truth is that in most corporations, there are usually very few leaders of this sort, and the corporate system makes it extremely difficult for exceptions to be made.
So, how do you go about managing your career?