Career progression is important for most people. Whether you want to progress your career by finding your next role in a new company, by nabbing an internal promotion or just by creating your own progression through growth and pay rises, these steps will work for most situations.
You can’t expect to make progress when you don’t know where you’re going. Being able to grow your career starts with knowing what you want to achieve, what success looks like for you and what you can feasibly aim for in the next few months and years.
Take the time to think about where you see yourself in five years. Do you still want to be in your current company or do you want to work somewhere else? What job do you want to have? What do you hope your salary will be? What experience and skills would you like to gain in that time? Once you’ve written all of these objectives down, you can start working out a ‘SMART’ plan.
When you set goals for your career, you should always make sure they are SMART – specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely. It’s not enough to just say, “I want to be more senior in my company by next year”. Be specific about what senior actually means. Figure out how you’re going to track your progress, make sure your goal is an achievement and in line with your overall career goals and give yourself a realistic deadline.
A mentor is always valuable to have, even if you’re not looking to move up the career ladder right this second. For one thing, you will have access to valuable feedback from your mentor. For another, a good mentor will help you expand your network and give you access to their ways of thinking, which will help you develop your own thoughts and ideas.
Having a good career mentor means your professional learning will be streamlined. You will have opportunities to learn from someone who is further on in their career and will help you on your own career trajectory.
You can benefit from both internal and external mentors. A mentor within your company can really help you develop in your own role and may even help you identify progression and promotion tracks within the organisation that you didn’t even know about. On the flip side, an external mentor can offer you impartial advice from outside your company, which will be particularly important for those who plan to leave their current organisation.
The feedback you receive throughout your career will always be extremely valuable when it comes to career progress. Whether you receive feedback in a job interview, at a regular performance review or a monthly management meeting, it is this feedback you can use to directly shape some of your goals.
Find out what you need to do to develop and enhance your skills. What are you lacking? What could you improve upon? If this is not said directly, don’t be afraid to ask. These are the more direct opportunities you will have one-to-one time with your manager or potential employer. They will be in the best position to tell you what you need to do to progress your career and if you’re not sure of the steps you need to take, this is the best way to find out.
Upskilling will seem like an obvious route to career progression, but it’s not enough to mindlessly upskill in some way and hope it will have a positive impact on your career. Look back at your aspirations and SMART goals and see what areas you need to upskill in to achieve your dreams. Or look at what you would like to make a part of you career and work on those skills.
Either way, your upskilling needs to be relevant to your overall strategy in order to progress your career. It’s all well and good to do a course in coding but if you don’t plan on using it in any way in current or future roles, it won’t do you much good.
Everyone has a different feeling about networking but whether you like it or not, you can’t deny that it is an important part of your career development. When we say networking, we don’t just mean showing up at networking events and schmoozing – in fact most people can spot this a mile off.
When we say networking, we really mean getting involved in your industry and its community. Attend events and meetups that are actually worthwhile, get to know other people working in your area and build your own valuable network to interact with throughout your career.
Your sole aim should not be to schmooze your way into a job, but to build real, lasting relationships within the industry so that you can gain valuable insights, find out what’s going on in the industry and possibly hear about job or career growth opportunities in a more organic way.
Finally, both in your role and externally, be proactive about your career. The worst thing you can do is simply do your job to the best of your abilities and hope it’s enough to send a career opportunity your way.
If you want to make progress in your career, you have to seek and make opportunities for yourself. Not only that, but you have to be visible and vocal about your achievements. Again, you can’t expect your boss to magically notice your efforts at upskilling. Sure, some achievements do speak for themselves, but make sure you are vocal about everything that you’re doing to progress your career. This will make opportunities more likely.
Let your next dream job find you! Simply register your CV with us and/or create job alerts tailored to your specific career preferences. Sit back, and let us do the hard work on your behalf. Feeling confused about your career? We’ve got everything you need to know about progression, new jobs and happiness in your career right here.
Written with contributions from the RECRUITERS team
Mountain climbing photo by Fabrizio Conti on Unsplash
