The most important condition for having a successful career is to be healthy

Introduce yourself in a few words..

My name is Hristo Kaftandzhiev and I am a professor of advertising, marketing communications, and semiotics at Sofia University.

 

How would you describe your career in a few words?

Relatively successful, although associated with quite a few difficulties. Probably the same is true for many people.

 

What was the most important choice that shaped your path in?

Since my student years, I had made my most important choice to become a university lecturer in advertising to some extent.

It is excellent for a person to know from the very beginning what they want to work on.

 

What would you like to know at the beginning of your career that no one told you?

I had no idea about the practical steps regarding my career. It is great to have excellent career development specialists who have media and publish quality guides in this regard.

This way, we will all save ourselves a lot of troubles and mistakes in our career life.

 

How can a person understand which profession is suitable for them?

There is no doubt that our future profession is genetically predetermined from birth.

Of course, it is good from an early school age for quality psychometricians to diagnose us and direct us towards the work we are created for and love.

 

What skills according to you will be key in the next 10 years?

It depends on each of us. For quite a few people at the moment, who have the desire and potential to develop, it is quality education, decent command of two or three foreign languages, and, of course, skills for effective work with artificial intelligence.

 

How to build a network of useful contacts without appearing interested?

Personal contacts are important, but it is far more important to build ourselves as unique, competent, and ethical specialists. Then we will “sell ourselves” excellently in the labor market. Accordingly, other people will try to create useful contacts with us, some interested, and some pretending to be “uninterested”.

 

What is the biggest mistake you have made in your career, and what did you learn from it?

You should not help people you know little. The vast majority of those helped will sooner or later stab you in the back.

 

How to recognize a toxic work environment and when is it time to leave?

The vast majority of work environments are highly toxic. We leave one toxic environment only to end up in an even more poisonous place.

It is better to either develop a private business where we create our own environment.

Another option is a job where you hardly meet your colleagues. Such a profession is, for example, that of a university lecturer.

 

What would you do differently if you could start over?

I would read quality books on personal development, personal marketing, and personal branding.

 

How to maintain your motivation in times of stagnation?

A well-marketed specialist rarely falls into stagnation. They are full of various opportunities, and the quality specialist sees them excellently, uses them skillfully, and continuously progresses.

 

How to achieve a balance between professional and personal life?

With good marketing of these two lives, the profession does not interfere with personal life and vice versa. Then these two lives integrate and help each other.

Of course, a person should not be painfully focused on their professional career. Otherwise, sooner or later, they will get sick.

 

When is it time to change our career, and not just the job?

Every situation in this regard can be unique, and therefore it is difficult and wrong to give universal advice.

But in many cases, things are related to our happiness. If there is an opportunity, of course, it is always excellent to put an end to our unhappy career.

However, it is likely that the vast majority of people are unhappy both in their work and in their career.

 

If you had to give just one piece of advice to people seeking success, what would it be?

It is still difficult to give universal advice. For each of us, success is individually defined.

Perhaps we should market ourselves excellently in relation to the labor market and treat others ethically.

However, the vast majority of people are neither excellently marketed nor particularly ethical towards others…

 

What is your definition of a “successful career”?

From my point of view, a successful career is to be healthy, to actively engage in sports like skiing and swimming, to have a good-natured beauty by your side, to work your favorite job, to earn enough money, to travel continuously abroad, to teach non-stop, and to be on good terms with your students.