Career Advice from Reid Hoffman

Career advice is like any advice from other people, most of it is barely worth a thing. But when someone like Reid Hoffman gives advice it is worth listening too. Hoffman is member of the PayPal Mafia and the founder of LinkedIn and last year wrote the book The Start-up of You. Business Insider recently published a set of slides that Hoffman and co-author Ben Casnocha put together for college students that took 3 ideas from there book.
The advice in the slides is really straight forward and practical for any professional looking to move ahead in their career. And the fact is in today's market if you are not moving forward you are probably dying. I took the information from the slides and distilled them down to the following points.
First is you need to understand your competition, because the fact is you are competing with others for your dream job. This should be evident to anyone who has recently started looking for a new position in today's market. To "beat" your competition you need to identify your competitive advantage.
Hoffman breaks competitive advantage out to three points:

1. Assets - What you have now.
2. Aspirations - Where you want to be in the future.
3. Market Realities - What people will actually pay you for.

I could go into more detail but you can read Hoffman's book or read the article for that.

The next item is your Network, this is more important than most people realize. Spend time developing and keeping a network strong professional ties. Hoffman's points on this are as follow.

1. Opportunities are attached to people, so look for people.
2. People control resources, opportunities and information.
3. People you spend time with shape who you are and who you become, so hang with people who are already the way you want to be.

One thing I will say about building a network is that you need to be able to connect with people when building your network. People like to connect with other people that they can relate to or are doing things that interest them. This connection could be over things that are outside of your chosen profession such as hobbies. Building a network is harder if you are a boring person.

Risk is a hard one for a lot of us, especially since most people don't understand it. My opinion is that people approach risk in one of two extreme, either they avoid it at all cost or they simply through themselves over the edge with no preparation. Prepare yourself, understand your market, your industry and where you are personally. Then work to limit your risk exposure, for example if you want to take a chance at working for a startup that will pay less in the short term with the possibility of a big pay off later. Then make sure you have your personal finances inline with the lack of pay and also plan your exit strategy. That is what Hoffman means by Intelligent Risks.

1. You don't the know best plan until you try
2. Actions trump plans
3. Take Intelligent Risks

As I mentioned at the start Hoffman's advice is really straight forward.

1. Develop Your Competitive Advantage
2. Build You Network
3. Take Intelligent Risks

Business Insider had another article about Hoffman and his book that provide advice that was broader in its intended audience.