Kaitlin Madden

You’ve worked your butt off the last few months trying to show your boss that you’re ready for a promotion, to no avail. You’ve gotten compliments from customers and you’ve surpassed your sales goals, but the promotion just isn’t happening.

You’re starting to think your boss must just hate the way you dress, or that she’s just got something against tattoos.

And you know what? You might be right.

By Anthony Balderrama

One of the first realizations many professionals have early in their careers is the divide between personal preferences and the workplace reality. You don’t have to be a genius or even moderately intelligent to quickly realize that you’re an employee when on the clock. You don’t get to do whatever you want. The company tells you what to do, not the other way around.

Please note: We don’t advocate you becoming a mindless drone. We’re just saying that the boss sets office hours, dress code and other guidelines. If you walked in the boss’ office and said, “Hey, you need to get here early tomorrow,” she’d probably laugh at you and then hand you a pink slip.

In our modern world of Human Resource Management, the choice of job fits impact not just commercial organizations but people like you and I who have the unenviable job of choosing a care-giver to our parents and children.

Methods such as DISC Assessment, Psychometrics, Myer-Briggs Indicator and the Keirsey Temperament Sorter offer employers and head-hunters the benefit of sizing a candidate for certain responsibilities based on tried and tested methods of analyzing a person’s aptitude and attitude through systematic sequences. However, it has become known that one having taken one too many of such test would find little resistance to ‘tweaking’ his or her inclinations.

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By Dennis Nishi

Tamara Guion-Yagy was disappointed when Tetra Tech, an environmental engineering firm in Pasadena, Calif., hired somebody else for the job that she wanted. The 40-year-old graphic designer thought she was being tried out when the firm hired her as a temporary worker.

So Ms. Guion-Yagy worked even harder at the same temp job, often staying late to finish work. Her manager responded by creating another full-time position for Ms. Guion-Yagy. "I knew I'd be good at the job and liked the work," she says. "I just needed to show them how much."

When times are prosperous, companies are more likely to use temporary jobs as a low-risk way to vet full-time candidates. But the conversion rate from temporary to permanent worker has been low over the past few years as more companies lean on temps as a hedge against a double-dip recession, says Jonas Prising, president of Manpower North, a temporary-staffing company in Milwaukee, Wis.

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As vice president of a Los Angeles film-production company in the 1980s, Ronald Kaufman had nearly everything that he'd ever wanted in a job -- great pay, friendly co-workers and interesting work coordinating product placements in films. Unfortunately, he hated the job.

"The owner of the company was a master at intimidation and would scream at everybody. An hour later, he would be a great guy. It made everybody unhappy to be there," says Mr. Kaufman, now an executive coach.

But he knew he wouldn't earn the same salary elsewhere, so Mr. Kaufman committed himself to making his situation work. "You can't really change people's nature, so I changed how I responded to him. I learned to align with his demands, instead of questioning them, and that made my 8½ years at the company so much easier."

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Mid-career derailment can happen any time, but in today's economy there is no room for complacency. With job opportunities harder than ever to find, it's a particularly rough time to be fired or demoted or to hit a career plateau. You can reduce your risk for derailment by paying attention to your value and effectiveness and by focusing on interpersonal skills, adaptability, team leadership and bottom-line results.

Based on the Center for Creative Leadership's ongoing study of executive derailment with clients around the world, here are 10 ways to avoid these pitfalls:

By Anthony Balderrama

I once had a job where, after four months in the office, I still couldn’t pinpoint exactly what one person did. She and I would be in the same meetings, but she didn’t say or do anything that hinted at her professional purpose. Not once did we collaborate on a project, though we made polite conversation in the hallways. When I asked my boss about this person’s role, I received an eye roll and a shrug. In other words, no one knew what this person with a vague job title spent her time doing.

In all honesty, most of us probably don’t know what other people are doing on a daily basis. We know what their job functions are, but how they spend their working hours is anyone’s guess. Perhaps no one is on the receiving end of such speculation more than our bosses. Surely we’ve all thought, “I’m doing all the work, but the CEO’s bonus is bigger than my entire paycheck.”

Most people can only dream of being in a job they love. But for two Navy personnel, they are enjoying the dynamism and immense possibilities of their chosen careers. Besides imbuing them with a strong sense of mission and pride, the camaraderie forged between colleagues is second to none.

By Ruth Wong

Military Expert (ME1) Samantha Phoon Wui Ling knew she did not want any ordinary career. This desire for the extraordinary led her to do her own research on a career with the Republic of Singapore Navy (RSN).

Her visit to the Navy Recruitment Centre turned out to be the pivotal point in her life. Then a first-year student at Temasek Polytechnic, she found herself being won over by the recruitment officers and eventually made up her mind to join the Navy.

Explaining her decision, Samantha says, “I’ve always had a patriotic streak in me. I love my country and family and I wanted to be part of the protection force.”

“But most of all, a career with the Navy allows me to see the world,” highlights the 29-year-old Naval Electronics Warfare Expert who has been with the Navy for six years.

Contributed by Kamal Kant

As 2010 draws to a close and 2011 is about to dawn, many of us will take stock of our career progress to-date and where we are headed. Some of us have achieved our career goals and even been rewarded appropriately. But many of us regretfully feel we have put in much but not been even recognised. In fact, all of us come to end of year career crossroads. It is often this momentary pause at the career crossroad that prompts us to make New Year resolutions for our career. These resolutions unsurprisingly will be reactive and hardly addresses the action to overcome the real causes of career challenges or the lethargy of career advancement.

Changing Aspirations
Dealing with career challenges and setback is never an easy issue. Career challenges and setbacks involve not only workplace issues but also issues related to our social or private life; our habits, moods and attitudes; as well as our aspirations and stage of life. For example, what may have been important in your early thirties is no longer relevant when you are 38 or 39. Your focus may now be your children’s educational advancement rather than your own career advancement. Do you then just keep the pace at work? Or at 45, you are not getting ahead. Do you let your entrepreneurial streak take over and become an independent ‘consultant’? As life circumstances and situation change so do our aspirations to change career goals.