Luciano Santos is a renowned author, mentor, and speaker. In his bestselling book, Seja egoísta com sua carreira (How to Be Selfish with Your Career), Santos shares expert advice for professional development from his 20+years of experience at companies like Google.

Luciano Santos: A few years ago, I told someone they should be more selfish with their career, and that became a catchphrase for my readers to know me by. But it’s a concept worth thinking about.

Overall, people are everything but selfish when managing their careers. That’s because people tend to carry old habits – maybe their parents’ opinions or urban myths. They're missing something that's very important: how to put themselves at the center of their career. This can cause a lot of unhappiness at work.

But when people put themselves first, and think of their evolution – like training and which courses to take – the company benefits, too. When you think you should put the company at the center of your career, then no one is winning.

I love reading about career struggles, and I started to see a lot of patterns while mentoring thousands of people. One thing I noticed is that most people are unhappy at work. This is not my opinion – there’s lots of research about being unhappy in jobs regardless of where you live, what industry you’re in, or how far into your career you are.

I thought, “What can we do to change this?” I needed to find a scalable way of sharing career tips, and deliver them in a way that readers could absorb them and feel happier at work.

Once you become proficient in speaking and reading English, a whole new world opens up for you – not just in terms of your career but also in life, with the wealth of information you gain access to.

I learned English almost by accident. When I was hired at Google, my English level was intermediate. Despite struggling with the language, I was hired because the interviewers believed in my ability to learn and gave me the opportunity to do so.

During my first weeks at Google, I found myself in situations where I couldn't understand anything spoken by my fast-talking manager from San Francisco. This made me consider leaving Google and looking for another job. But fortunately, after having a conversation with her, I decided to put in the effort and study English every single day for two years.

My top advice is to learn how to manage your manager, something many people are not aware of. We have a severe issue with management training. Many managers are not well-trained, and as a result, we see managers who are ill-prepared and lack necessary skills.

I strongly believe that we need to be protagonists in our own careers. If I have a manager who isn’t providing me feedback I need, I should proactively approach them and ask for feedback. The same applies to promotions – if I aspire to advance in my career, it’s important to actively engage with my manager.

There’s still a significant amount of [career] unhappiness out there and there's still a lot of work to be done, especially in leadership. That's what keeps me going.

My first book is an attempt to provide tools, strategies, and practices. I conducted research and found that more than 50% unhappy individuals cite their managers as the main cause. Separately, I asked 6,500 managers about their training efforts. The results showed that only 53% of them received any type of training or information to support their management role.

I genuinely believe that if we understand the significant gap in manager training and preparation, we become responsible for our careers. That's what keeps me motivated. I see my work as unfinished, and I receive testimonials and messages from people almost every day.

I'm a very communicative person, and I naturally connect with people. I have connections that I carry from the previous companies where I worked. One strategy I have is to make every quality interaction I have at work into part of my network.

Don’t just try to strengthen your network when you need it. Rather, do your networking when you don't need it – that’s the best time. Building professional connections is vital for career continuation.

I have half a million followers on LinkedIn, which is my main social media network. I also have 125,000 followers on Instagram, so I use both platforms daily.

YouTube is another platform I love – I use it for myself and to entertain my 5-year-old daughter. She’s allowed to watch TV for one hour each day.

Lately, I’ve been using the Blinkist app a lot. I find it challenging to keep up with the number of books I want to read, so I use the app to browse the key ideas in several books and purchase the ones I like. This habit has been a lifesaver for me and helps me keep up with my English as well.