There is no security in this life. There is only opportunity.
Douglas MacArthur

Rewards in organizations come in two forms, one obvious in the form of pay and the other more subtle namely, experience. Both are valuable in their own way but pay in the form of experience is accumulative and, what’s more, it is difficult to lose once you have gained it. You can’t have an overdraft of experience.
It is usually thought that qualifications are the key for success but this is not so. Only about 15 per cent of managers and executives are qualified for what they do; the other 85 per cent have experience. Qualifications are, of course, important but they only determine how high up the ladder you start (and no one starts at the top!) but it is experience that takes you most of the way in your career. I train hundreds of people every year in how to be interviewed. Not one of them has ever come back form an interview and said they were asked about what class of degree they got, but they all report being asked lots of questions about their experience.
The message is clear, treat experience as seriously as you do your salary. It is strange that employees ask for pay rises and work hard to achieve a bonus but so few ask for the sort of experience they need for their career.
Sometimes employees almost make the ultimate career sacrifice. They stay locked into a boring, dead-end job for years because of the money and all the time their real value in career terms, that is their experience, is continually being devalued.
Take your experience seriously, work hard for it, and negotiate for it because it is a key to your perfect career.

A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.
Francis Bacon