Millennials are slowly starting to take over the world. By 2030, 50% of the population will be millennials. Millennials are different from the generations before them; they will not settle for the first job that comes their way. A 9 – 5 career with a 40-year pension and retirement package is not attractive to them.
Millennials learned to rely on themselves after the companies failed them during the recession. They only have to build a career from scratch, and all they have is their talent.
Building a Career from Talent
Find Your Talent
When you want to build a career from talent, you first find out what you are good at and what you enjoy doing. Often these are the same thing, but not always.
The problem comes when you cannot identify your talent. Then you can consult friends and family. Friends and family might see your talent better than you can.
Develop Your Talent
you must hone your skills so that you can have an advantage over your competition. Honing talent takes hard work and endless practice to perfect.
Take formal classes and practice so you can make your talent a marketable commodity.
Remember, someone who works hard but has no talent will trump a lazy talented person every time.
Developing your skill is a process you can never stop. Your skills must improve and get better as there is always someone better than you. If you stop perfecting your talent, you will immediately fall behind.
Do Thorough Research
Ask yourself these questions:
- Who would pay for my talent?
- How marketable is my talent?
- How can I market your talent?
- How much competition am I facing?
- Can I use my talent in fields other than the obvious one?
- Can I leverage my talent in the field I am in currently?
Find Mentors
A mentor in the field you have chosen to pursue will help you get past the many roadblocks you will find. A good mentor can help you develop your skills so that you can be more competitive.
Your mentor should be able to open some doors for you. if they have been in your industry for a long time, they will have many connections that can benefit you.
They can connect you to their network and introduce you to people who can help your career grow.
Get Started
Beyond all the training, research, and mentorship, you will eventually have to start your journey.
Relying on your talent may take a long time to accomplish your goals, but with patience and perseverance, you can certainly succeed.
Develop a Long-Term Perspective
As a group, we millennials have trouble visualizing the future. It hampers our ability to plan for it adequately. However, you must have a long perspective.
The first step is to have priorities. Priorities are what you want most in life. Start by making short-term goals and accomplishing them. As you continue to set your goal post further in the future, you also create a plan you can follow and use to succeed.
Developing a long-term perspective makes you more efficient as you trim the fat from your life. You can evaluate your life and, with your goals in mind, decide on the things you want to cut out, reduce, increase, and start doing.
There are always habits, friends, and behaviors you want to remove from your life but seem unable to. Take this chance to remove them. With other things, you need to devote less time to them but removing them from your life is not necessary.
Some things in your life would benefit if you were to spend more time on them, and in others, you need to add to your schedule.
All these actions must serve your goals in the long run.
Invest in Yourself
When you invest in yourself, you take the time to develop your talents and polish them. When you invest in yourself, you show that you have faith in your skills and believe in your ability to become the best.
How to Invest in Yourself
To invest in yourself, you need to:
- Learn new skills.
- Improve the skills you already have.
- Broaden your network.
- Improve your health.
Investing in yourself does not have to be grand; take small steps to improve yourself. Take a few minutes from your day and learn a new skill or advance your education.
Build Your Portfolio
Your portfolio includes the raw talents you have.
Building your portfolio means you take all those raw talents and work to increase your value by raising them.
Conclusion
Building a career out of your talent is not easy. It can be downright impossible. It will involve a lot of hard work and talent. If you want to choose this path, the earlier you start, the better it will be for you.