As a career coach and consultant, individuals often ask me to share a tip or two about careers so that they can succeed. My reply to them is you cannot succeed in a career simply by doing a thing or two. Career success is a strategic juxtapositioning of a number of career initiatives. Knowing yourself in terms of strength and weaknesses obviously is important. More critical is being ready to respond to the right opportunity at the right time with the right combination of your knowledge, skills, abilities, expertise and experience. By having a career coach, he or she can guide you to develop this elixir for your career success!

Whilst having the right work-related knowledge, skills, abilities, expertise, competencies and experience may secure you interim work or a job interview, an increasing number of employers are looking for candidates with good to excellent social, relational and interpersonal skills. An experienced coach can often be an excellent objective evaluator and adviser of communication and soft skills. But there must be a readiness to listen to feedback and proactively responding by making adaptations and adjustments to your attitudes and behaviour.

Staying focused on your genius not your mediocrities is one way to move ahead. Do what you're best at. Sure, you can swim upstream in a raging river. But wouldn't you be happier swimming downstream with the current? A key element in developing your elixir of career success is having a keen awareness of your strengths and weaknesses. By having this awareness, you can then use your strength optimally whilst downplaying your weaknesses.

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