Career progression is a tricky business, the modern world of work is far from straightforward and it’s not just a matter of keep you head down, work hard and you will be rewarded with promotions and higher salaries. These days career planning and setting goals and objectives is entirely necessary. So here are a few ways to make for a happy and successful career.
Make Your Own Opportunities
One good piece of advice is to look to create opportunities for yourself where no-one else would. Whether this means taking initiative and starting a project or securing new clients or even just making suggestions on where your work can make improvements to current methods or practices. You could also take the step of starting your own business if you feel that there is less scope for advancement in an employed role.
Create A Good Professional Network
No matter what industry you work in it can never be a bad thing to know as many people as possible, even if a contact seems to have no relevance to your job as it stands you never know when it could come in useful. Someone may end up being a bigger player in future and could be good for giving you a recommendation or even a job or could be a good contact for a future employer to take advantage of. Be sure to make good and positive connections with people and avoid negative talk or comments about others as you never know when you may have to deal with them in future.
Have a Good Work History On Your Resume
This is something that may sound like an obvious statement but your work history says a lot about you, do you change jobs often? If so why? Maybe you do contract work or are freelance and ,if so that’s fine, but otherwise this can look like a negative. The quality of the firms you have worked for is as important to some employers as the position you were employed as, so think very carefully about any move and how it would look to a potential employer. If you were lucky enough to have experience when studying such as undergraduate placement year jobs be sure to include them as well.
Remember To Strike A Career-Life Balance
It’s important I think to also make a quick note here that you do need to also make a work-life balance for yourself. The career is important but really it’s all for nothing if you are not enjoying your life outside of work as well.
Make Sure You Keep Up Your Continuing Professional Development
Finally it’s important to keep up on continuing professional development as it’s likely that whatever role you are in it won’t cover all developments in your industry. So make sure you are keeping up to date on reading up journals in your sector and be aware of what else is going on with the big players as you never know when you may need to deal with them or apply for a job there and knowledge is invaluable.
