Benjamin Todd

Concrete steps for gaining career capital.

Which career capital is best for you to focus on depends on where you're aiming to end up longer term, which we encouraged you to think about in the last chapter.

It's worth asking yourself, if I want to end up working in a particular position, what next step would most accelerate me in that path?

We'll talk about this more in chapter 9 on career planning.

But it's also worth thinking about which options will most boost your capabilities in general.

To help come up with ideas for that, below are some steps that our readers have found to be good for gaining career capital in general.

Note down any that could be a good fit for you.

You can add these to your list of ideas for next steps that we'll make later in the guide.

1.

Work at a growing organization that has a reputation for high performance in your path.

If you've just graduated, you're probably not very good at doing real work.

In college, you're told to answer well-defined problems with clear answers over short time frames, which are possible to master.

In the world of work, much of the challenge is working out what the problem is in the first place and prioritizing what to work on.

Projects don't automatically have well-defined scopes or success criteria.

Great performance might not be possible or could take many years.

You probably don't know how to do the basics like run a weekly check-in meeting, read financial statements, give good presentations, or speak to a boss.

So, often one of the most useful things you can do after college is to go and work with any high-performing, high-integrity team, where you can be mentored in the highly useful skill of generally getting stuff done at work.

If the organization also has a good reputation, then you'll also get the credential of saying you've worked there.

And you'll probably be able to meet lots of other ambitious people, building your connections.

If it's rapidly growing, you'll have more opportunities for promotions, morale will be better, and your future achievements will be more impressive.