Wondering Why Your Career Has Stalled?

There are lots of reasons your career has stalled—and many of them have nothing to do with your supervisor.

If you find your career to be stuck, you need to take a hard look at how you might be contributing to the situation.

Here are some of the most common reasons things are not going as well as you had hoped.

• You don’t take the initiative
• You fulfill only your job requirements
• The position you want doesn’t exist
• You only want a paycheck—and it’s clear
• You have an entitlement mentality
• You are unorganized / procrastinate
• Your job skills are outdated
• Your personal issues affect your performance
• You lack interpersonal skills
• You don’t follow through
• You don’t implement suggestions
• You don’t express interest in development
• You lack professionalism
• You have “issues” with key personnel

Of course there are other possibilities as well but if one (or more) of the above reasons resonate with you, consider making a commitment to getting your career back on track.

You can make a plan by documenting the following—and following through:

Feedback Received
__________________

What Needs to Work
__________________

My solution to fix this is
__________________

I can demonstrate improvement by
__________________

While I cannot guarantee that this will work, at a very minimum it will allow you to know that you did everything you could before you decide to move on to another employer.

Nancy H. Segal is a federal job search expert. Following her own senior-level federal HR career, she founded Solutions for the Workplace LLC to provide a HR management perspective to astute applicants to U.S. government positions.

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