Everyone begins their career in much the same way: with optimism to climb the corporate ladder quickly and steadily and join management.
Out in the real world, however, this rarely happens. And when it does, it’s usually a culmination of a systematic way of doing things.
Employees that enjoy a rapid career ascension tend to do things differently from their counterparts.
By knowing what these things are, you can adopt them into your career life to increase your odds of success.
Here are some tips to help you out.
1. Create Short and Long-term Goals
Most employers will set targets for you; annually or over shorter durations. While these are fine, they might not always excite or challenge you.
To counter this, set your own goals geared towards career growth. These should be measurable, challenging, and stimulating enough to ensure you push yourself to be the best you can be.
2. Improve Your Organizational Skills
The more your career grows, the more roles you might find yourself juggling.
Because each step requires you to perform exemplary well to get ahead, improving your organizational skills can play a role in that.
Thankfully, technology has come in to aid professionals with busy schedules to manage their workload effectively.
Therefore, look into several different schedulers to see which one works best for you.
An online scheduler is particularly great for people that travel a lot because you can access your itinerary from anywhere in the world.
3. Skip College
This might seem counter-productive on the surface. But it is known to work depending on the field you’re looking to get into.
Your peers will take about four years of college or university before getting their first job.
If you are able to get your first job without having to wait four years, you will be a shoulder above your peers in four years.
To get there, however, you need to do extensive research on how to get a job without graduating from university as well as research the fields that support this.
4. Better Yourself
Bettering yourself includes taking both formal and informal education to gain more knowledge and skills.
If you skipped college right before your first job, this is just as important for you as it is for those that did attend college.
Continually be on the lookout for opportunities to update your knowledge.
This can be through signing up for seminars, taking an online course, attending industry events, hiring a career coach, etc. The options are endless.
For all skills where you get a certification, be sure to forward this to HR. New skills are great. But when it comes to career progression, you want the people with the power to give you promotions to be aware of your qualifications and suitability.
5. Take Care of Your Main Asset: You
You will be surprised at how many professionals focus on all aspects of their careers and neglect the most important one themselves.
Indeed, many people trade their health for career advancement. This is an unproductive and costly habit to create.
Most successful people have one thing in common; they make time off their busy schedules to work out.
To accelerate your career, you need to be in top form, physically and mentally. This necessitates the need to care for your health. It is, therefore, important to eat well, work out, and take occasional breaks to allow the body to reinvigorate.
The long and short of getting ahead in your career is to know where you want to go and to take calculated steps to get there. But most of all, you must remain focused at all times.
