Progressing in your career is a natural side-effect of improving your skills and building on your experience, allowing you better remuneration for a higher quality of work, or for more difficult industry-specific tasks.But for many, career progression can be difficult to navigate without the right guidance. The following tips can help you direct your efforts, and grow your career effectively and organically.
Set SMART Goals
The first step in any career-minded process is the setting out of a robust plan. Wanting to progress your career is a meaningful pursuit, but if ill-defined can lead to listlessness and poor longer-term results. By defining your goals, and understanding where exactly in your career you would like to be within a reasonable timeframe, you can target your efforts towards specific areas and increase your likelihood of success.
One effective way to frame your career goals is SMART – an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely. Any goal you set for yourself should pass these five tests before it is included in your overall career plan. For example, you might want to expand your knowledge of an industry-specific tool, such as a coding language. The goal “code more” may be a realistic one, and somewhat measurable by crossing a minimum threshold of work per day, but the goal is also non-specific, with no clear attainable end result and no deadline in which to achieve that result. Instead, the goal could be “obtain a working knowledge of Python by the end of the year.”
Utilise Training and Development Resources
You can also leverage resources available at your existing workplace, in order to grow your skills and improve your CV. Many businesses offer a package of free programmes and resources by which you can develop your skills, and a conversation with the HR department can often lead to guided development in a specific field or discipline.
There are also external resources and opportunities you can study to further your development. Many businesses use leadership assessment services to assist them in hiring managers and business leaders; by understanding the metrics these services use to help businesses find leaders, you can inform your own learning to meet key indicators.
Review Your Opportunities
One of the bigger mistakes you can make when it comes to progressing your career is failing to recognise and seize upon positive growth opportunities. It can be easy to feel ill-equipped for new responsibility, or unready for the rigours of the next step in your career – but a sense of diligence regarding the opportunities around you could serve you well. If there are any internal opportunities with your current employer, a simple enquiry could open that door to you, or give you a clearer route to that role.
By that same token, it is important to know when an employer isn’t serving your growth mission. With ONS statistics indicating that those who switch jobs are more likely to grow their salary, opportunities outside of your existing workplace could be better suited to developing your career–and offer you new routes to progression.
