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I have been through dozens of interviews and every interview has the same repeating questions:
- What are your strengths & weaknesses?
- What was your role at your last job?
- Tell us about a challenge you faced at your last job and how you tackled it?
A lot of people including me would fumble on these questions and you can easily gauge that by the number of google searches these questions get. But there is a much easier and more genuine way to answer these questions, something that most of us don't even consider doing in our careers.
And that is by keeping a written record of all the tasks you have done, all your accomplishments, and your failures.
I call this a Career Journal, if we keep a journal about our lives, why not have a dedicated journal for our career?
After all, our career has a huge impact on our lives. A career journal is the fastest way to gain introspection of yourself, create genuine answers to tough interview questions, and negotiate your way to better pay.
Whether you are already employed and need to ask for a raise or unemployed and looking for a job. It helps you immensely in both of these scenarios.
Keeping a Journal develops Perspective
Imagine this, you want to ask for a raise but don't know how to position that question.
How do you position yourself in a way where you can maximize your chances of succeeding, for that you need to be able to articulate your achievements and condense them to drive the message across.
That will never happen if you haven't kept a written record. If you kept a written record, you will be able to quickly search through, formulate the best things you did, and put forth your case in the most shining light.
Journalling helps you keep things in perspective, what did you do right, what went wrong, how did you fix something? All of these stay written and are something you can easily refer back to.
How to get started?
To start journalling you can easily use Notion, Google Docs, or even a pencil and paper.
Create a simple template, consider it like you are giving an end-of-day update but only add things you completely did, your wins and your losses, and any extra comments on what you think about them.
Remember, this is completely private so you don't need to be hesitant, be honest
Here's what I do:
- Make one document for each month
- Divide the document into 4 weeks
- Add any tasks I finished that day
- Add any cool things I did that are relevant to my job
- Update it daily or as I go
It's necessary you write daily or write as you go because you might forget important information later.
At the end of the week,
- I spend 10 minutes going over each day
- I create a summary of the most important tasks I achieved
- If I did something praise worthy, expand it further
At the end of each month, you can create a summary of the whole month.
It takes about 3 hours a month to journal regularly, but it will save you tons of time and give you an extreme amount of leverage anywhere you go.