Over an eggnog latte at Starbuck’s, take a moment to consider your unique strengths, skills, and interests to ensure you are doing what you do best in terms of employment. With this caffeine induced focus, you’ll be prepared to consider ways you can better leverage your talents and identify career paths – whether within your current organization, or with another employer – and then begin to map a plan of action.

At this time of year, many people resolve to achieve success and personal satisfaction in their careers. Unfortunately, it is not always true that you can grow and thrive where you are planted. In this case it is time to start asking yourself some tough questions to help evaluate your career satisfaction and success:

Assess your level of satisfaction. Consider how much you enjoy the work you do, your career opportunities, and the culture of the organization. If you’re not happy in your role or with your employer, a job change may be something to consider. You may want to examine changing specialties, job functions, or consider getting the education you need to do this.”

Assess your skills and abilities. Are you doing what you do best? Take a look at your skills, abilities, and interests, and see if they are aligned with your current role. People whose skills, abilities, and interests are at their highest perform at the top of their games, and get the most satisfaction out of the work they do.

Assess your employer’s outlook for the future.  It is important to consider how well your employer is performing organizationally, and what the future looks like. Are projects, program, and head count increasing or decreasing? Is your employer an innovator in its field and competitive in its industry?

Assess your professional development opportunities. Are you satisfied with your current career path? Has your career been moving forward, laterally, standing still, or are you being bypassed for promotions and choice assignments?

Assess your career net worth.  Career net worth is the value the market places on your unique abilities and knowledge.  Continually building your skills, knowledge, and technical expertise creates demand, keeps you competitive, and generates the highest career net worth.

Assess your opportunities for 2008   Don’t neglect actively building and maintaining your network.  Great places to make new networking contacts include people from both your personal and professional lives, such as professional/technical member organizations, and community groups. Keep in touch regularly to strengthen those relationships.

And finally, be sure you don’t make impulsive, snap decisions based on only one or two factors – decisions about whether to change jobs or careers need to be based on a complete picture. For example, make sure that new employer can take you where you want to go.

 

See how Riverside County compares to your current employer. The following lists just some of the programs which can help individuals achieve their employment goals:

 

The floater program is designed to give Riverside County employees the opportunity to gain work experience in a new position for which they may not typically qualify. This program enables supervisors to infuse variety into their employees work duties and roles. We believe that variety is a key component of retention and employee satisfaction. The program also enables employee growth and broadens perspectives and skill sets. 

 

The expense of tuition, books and lost wages adds up quickly. These are just a couple of the many reasons that might discourage someone from seeking the kind of education that could ultimately lead to a better career, and a better quality of life. The County of Riverside Educational Support Program makes pursuing your educational and career goals easier. Our focus is on meeting the needs of the County’s workforce now and in the future with educated, professional employees.  (See current flyer while still posted.)

 

 

(See listing of Desert Colleges and Universities for contact information.)

 

 

Leadership Initiative
The Leadership Initiative program identifies, trains, develops, mentors & shapes the County's future leaders so employees can achieve personal & organizational greatness. This program allows the County to "grow our own" leaders from within the existing workforce -- to assist leadership candidates with developmental opportunities & guidance.  And, develop a work culture that encourages and supports innovation, service, teamwork, and quality government. 

Management Excellence Academy

Back to the basics is the theme for this initiative, the management basics being Planning, Organizing, Leading and Controlling.   Using the Louis Allen "Profession of Management" model as the core systems framework, managers learn the fundamentals to managing both aspects of their job: tasks and people.  Additional Management competencies build upon those mastered at the Individual Contributor Level and the Supervisory Level.

 

Supervisory Excellence Academy
Transitioning from Individual Contributor to Supervisor means stepping out of the "doing" role and on to the "first balcony" away from the floor.  Supervisors have a different relationship than the Individual Contributor to both the work and to the people.  The Supervisory Excellence Academy focuses on the competency development required for these new relationships to be successful. 

 

Most of the Technology classes are offered multiple times to meet demand throughout the year.  These classes may be taken individually and most classes are one day. Specialized topics may, also, involve in multi-day classes.

 

Explore Nursing career opportunities with Riverside County government.