Becoming an Opportunity Magnet
Make opportunities come your way
W e all want new opportunities in our life. But only some people are so lucky that they seem to have a special gravitational force to attract all the great things. They are always sought for. They are trusted and valued.
Let’s define such people as “Opportunity Magnets”. These people control and navigate their careers unlike the majority. They don’t spend months looking for jobs; recruiters come after them. They have a purpose. It is totally wrong to call them “lucky ones”.
“Luck is when preparation meets opportunity” — Seneca
Magnets know their playground very well. They make a lot of investment in their career. They love what they do, and therefore usually try to avoid opportunities that are not relevant to their career.
How Magnets Attract Opportunities
The volume of opportunities you get mainly depends on three things: your network, your skills, and your influence.
Network
Opportunity magnets constantly build and expand their network. Network, however, is not everyone you have known and met. Your network, I think, is the people with whom you can have mutual benefits. It is everyone whom you can offer some value or opportunity, and who can offer the same to you in return.
My network is small, but I appreciate every single person in my network. I must admit that I would not have achieved as much as I did without my network, especially my friend — Rustam (for me Russ). He, for me, is a great example of how your network can open your path to new opportunities.
Last year in August, during his trip to Tashkent, Russ met an amazing person, Nuruddin, and found out about Google Developers Groups (GDG), Google-supported IT communities. Nuruddin was a lead organizer at GDG Tashkent. After a couple of days, Russ arrived at Samarkand and told me about the program. We together decided that we will build our own IT community in Samarkand.
In September, we sent an application and passed an interview stage. One month later, we became an official GDG chapter. Since then we have been hosting various events, i.e. conferences, meetups, workshops, for developers and amateurs in this small non-techy town. We attracted over 100 people to our events, partnered with both private and public organizations, and got to know so many people.
Why am I telling this and how is it related to attracting opportunities? First, the events we hosted were a great opportunity for both participants and organizers to network with like-minded people. These events gave me a chance to meet my current employer, and we have recently launched a school for programmers. Second, during the events, I gained a few important skills, such as team management, audience targeting, event organization and planning. Two years ago, I had never believed that I would even become a good organizer.
Skills
Without skills, your network might be just useless. Even worse is that you cannot network with the right people without skills. An important thing to keep in mind here is that you should showcase your skills to your network. If people do not know what you can do, they can’t offer you an opportunity.
I had never thought of becoming a teacher or instructor until January 2020. Eventually, I became a teacher. Here is a story behind it: I used to write a lot of essays, journals and I loved writing; it became my skill. I used to often visit an English language school in my town — Innovative Centre (where I went to learn English), and share my experience, my knowledge of writing with beginner to intermediate English learners. Later, I got a job offer from my past English teacher, Mukhammadkhon (now my mentor), to teach writing in English at this school. I saw it as an opportunity to improve my public speaking skills. I decided to do this job. After 2 months, I found out that I had a great passion for teaching. You can read about it more in this article.
This was one of the most important decisions I made in my life because before that time, I could not even imagine myself teaching someone. Since then I got over 10 job offers for teaching (not only English, but also Math and Programming), which I had to reject because of my studies at DKU.
Telling people that you have the skills is not necessarily showing off; rather, it is letting people know that you can deliver some value to them in case they need your skills. Also, if people know what you can do, they are less likely to offer you irrelevant opportunities.
Influence
The third component is what turns connected and skilled people into opportunity magents. Becoming an influencer is not easy. But with the right skills and end goal, you can change at least one person’s mind. Your influence will reveal your credibility and value.
I do not yet consider myself an influencer, but I do have plans to share my knowledge with people and lead them to the right paths in the future. I am still studying Data Science. I am interested in exploring the capabilities of Artificial Intelligence. I want to research Machine Learning and apply it to solve both small-scale and large-scale problems. Once I get “there” and see AI from the other side, I will start sharing it with my network.
How to Become an Opportunity Magnet
Before going, I would like to write about what things can help us become opportunity magnets. The most important characteristic of magnets is that they always invest time and energy in career. They have a real purpose, and they seize opportunities that help them get closer to their end goal. They consistently develop their skills, and foster a growth mindset.
“I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more of it I seem to have.” — Coleman Cox
Magnets are confident about what they do. There are millions of talented but confident people who struggle in advancing their career. Interestingly, research found that acting confident makes an impression that you are more competent.
Long-term plans are crucial. They help us set priorities and filter out opporunities. Magnets should always have plans for the next move. This helps say “no” to good opportunities and say “yes” to a perfect one. Magnets should not make spontaneous and rush decisions.
Last but not least, magnets should make themselves and their skills visible to their network. No one will approach you if they do not know that you exist. It is now easy to use social media channels to share your knowledge and provide your audience with value.
Goals first, Opportunities second
There are good and bad opportunities. You should not say “yes” to every opportunity you get. Do not select a job or career path based on available opportunities; select a job based on your goals.
When you are an opportunity magnet, you are the ruler. You are in control of choosing where to go next. You make things happen in the timeline you want. You will never find yourself desperately looking for a new job or next destination. You will be prepared for the next move.
