Growing your career is an ongoing process. If you’re committed to professional advancement, it’s embedded into your day-to-day mindset. No one else can do it for you – not your boss, your colleagues, your family or your friends. After all, it’s your career. And realizing all you want out of it is exciting, fulfilling, and filled with great rewards.
But how do you turn that commitment into action?
Here are ten tips:
- Set SMART This acronym stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. Keeping SMART guidelines in mind helps you create effective goals that you can achieve and track successfully.
- Challenge yourself with stretch goals. Beyond your established goals, go a step further and set stretch goals. These are purposefully ambitious goals that challenge you to move outside your comfort zone. They’re not met to be achieved 100 percent of the time, but rather are designed to inspire growth and prevent complacency.
- Seek feedback. Effective communication is a two-way street, especially when it comes to your career. Continuously ask for input from your manager, teammates and colleagues on how you’re doing and what you might do better.
- Keep your work curated. This means keeping an updated portfolio of your best work, so it’s ready at your fingertips when you need it. It’s like writing your resume as you go.
- Know your company and industry. Stay abreast of current developments and ask intelligent questions so you can develop rich, thoughtful insights. Then, don’t be afraid to share them.
- Always be learning. Knowing your industry is part of what should be a lifelong learning process. Always be open to new knowledge, perspectives and ideas, regardless of where you are in your career.
- Always be listening. Master and apply active listening skills in every aspect of your professional life. (Hint: they can be invaluable outside of work, too!)
- Expand your network. Attend conferences and industry events. Join online groups. Schedule informational interviews and join a professional association. Take every opportunity to connect with the best and the brightest in your field.
- Get a mentor. A mentor is an advisor who provides you with a trusted, experienced perspective that helps you define and achieve your career goals. You may even want more than one mentor – like your own personal board of directors. They can help you move forward and they may recognize things about you like strengths you’ve overlooked.
- Get a protégé. In this relationship, you’re the mentor. Helping someone else grow is amazingly rewarding. Plus, mentors often benefit from the partnership as well. The best mentor/protégé relationships solidify and last throughout one’s career.
The career development experts at Accurate Staffing Consultants, Inc., are ready and waiting to partner with you as your advance in your current role or find your next great professional opportunity in fields including healthcare, light industry and more. For us, growing careers isn’t just our out job, it’s a calling. Reach out to us today to learn more.