Business Career Center.com

If your career is at a standstill and you can’t figure out why, you may want to consider reading some books on how to overcome roadblocks in life. One good one is The 12 Bad Habits That Hold Good People Back. This interesting book will really surprise you with its insight. Its tone is authoritative but not too stuffy or academic, although it is written by a couple of Harvard Business School psychologists. They talk of workplace behavior patterns and focus on personal weaknesses rather than successes in order to foster improvement.

Subtitled, “overcoming the behavior patterns that keep you from getting ahead,” the book identifies behaviors and attitudes that create an underlying personality or premise beneath all your work and your interactions with others. These habits often sabotage career growth, and they don’t have to. This book is designed to help business men and women make paradigm shifts in how they think about all aspects of their careers. Read 12 Bad Habits and make a positive move forward in your career.

Whether you have landed your first career job or are still looking for one, there are a few things you must do to ensure that you are, and remain, the ideal candidate.

• First of all, make sure your social networking pages are professionally oriented or else make them private. If your friends insist on posting embarrassing photos of spring break in Orlando or your crazy days in college, you can’t let employers see this. This type of “too much information” situation has ruined many a career already. Many hiring managers will purposely check your social networking pages just to see what kind of person you “really” are.
• Have a great looking resume. That means, usually, hire someone. Unless you are trained in resume writing, you have got to acknowledge that this is a skill that doesn’t come naturally. It isn’t like college essay writing and it isn’t like writing a proposal. A resume is a very specific document that should be drafted by a professional.
• Find positions that have not been affected by the recession and look into what extra qualifications, if any, you will need to pursue them. These days you have to be flexible and go where the money is, so don’t stand on ceremony or become stubborn about your chosen field.

Business majors often gravitate toward the most predictable careers. They look toward finance, economics, marketing, and the like. These are all interesting fields, but why not take a look at some of the more unusual careers out there for business majors? What about, for instance, the career of a buyer? About 43 percent of buyers today are employed by the wholesale trade or manufacturing establishments, so if you are interested in imports, fashion, craft goods, or any number of other commodities, you may find being a buyer to be truly fulfilling.

Some firms prefer to promote existing employees to the position of buyer while others actually recruit business graduates and train them in this specialized field. What do they do? Well, they shop for a living! If the thought of this excites you, read on. What buyers do is buy goods and services that a company needs in order to resell them through the parent company. Wholesale and retail buyers purchase goods such as clothing or electronics, while purchasing agents buy goods and services for use by their own organization, not for resale. Buyers may also be assigned to purchase raw materials for manufacturing. For instance, a purchasing agent of farm products might be involved with buying such goods as grain, Christmas trees, or tobacco for processing or resale. A clothing buyer may have the privilege of attending haute couture fashion shows and selecting the most up-and-coming fashions for a department store.

Being a buyer is not for everyone, but it is an unusual track to take for any business career major. When you are looking for employment, remember that opportunities abound everywhere, not just in the most predictable business environments!