Every one of us has heard our parents talking about the time when graduation opened the doors to safe employment right until timely retirement. Well, we can all wholeheartedly agree that these golden years are far behind us and that the contemporary labor market paints an entirely different picture.
According to a recent survey, an average person in this day and age changes jobs 5 to 7 times during their work years while approximately 30% of the total workforce now changes employment every 12 months.
Still, this slightly chaotic situation doesn’t need to be seen as a detriment. If you choose the right direction, you can use every one of these turns to push your career further. Let us take a look at a couple of career development tips that should help you do so.
Take an honest look at your strengths and weaknesses
Of course, we are talking about your personal and professional traits since both these groups of qualities have a tremendous influence on how well you perform at the workplace. So, use this break from the work to take an honest look at the road you have traveled so far, see what things you have done right, what things you feel you could improve upon, and, finally, what traits you should get rid of. If you can’t take a neutral standpoint, ask your coworkers and former employers for feedback. As long as you learn something from them, all these previous experiences are nothing but very useful.
Use every new day to learn something new
It doesn’t matter what skills are we talking about or how minute these improvements may seem at the moment. Once enough time passes, these small efforts will produce tremendous cumulative effects and drastically expand your skillset. Some estimates say that the average person needs to spend 10,000 hours practicing some skill to reach a high level of expertise in it. Take this journey one hour at a time. One of the things that you could do to learn something new is to actually enroll to learn something new. A brand new chance with Vet Assistant Courses from Get Course could put you in an entirely new career class that you didn’t even know you had in you. Correcting your career dreams is not a bad thing. You can start from scratch all over again no matter how old you are. Don’t be afraid to do something new; It’s what keeps you young and motivated. What’s even more critical, committing to this cause and showing up every day will make the acquisition of new skills and knowledge a lifetime habit which is probably one of the most critical traits you can ever have.
Earn experience as a private assistant
This way, you will get a great opportunity to explore different career opportunities, diversify your income, and earn invaluable practical experience you can’t get through any kind of course and training. Finding these types of internships has also become very easy. If you are, for instance, a medical professional living in Australia, you only need to go through a couple of locum doctor recruitment agencies and you will be able to find interesting career options in just a couple of minutes. These small gigs don’t make a sustainable long-term employment solution but they are a great way to improve your resume.
Try to become indispensable in what you do
In the previous sections, we mentioned that you need to use every opportunity to learn something new. However, we would also like to point out that, while doing that, avoid ending up being a simple grunt and focus on the skills that are generating the greatest revenue. Even if you skip 90% of the basics that can be performed by an intern and limit your knowledge to the 10% that gets the ball rolling, the value you will add to the employer will make you indispensable. A similar thing can be said about soft skills like leadership, time management, negotiation abilities, and similar important traits.
Pen down a professional development plan
Having an idea of what you want to accomplish in your career is great. Having an outlined plan of how to get there is a hundred times better. Therefore, take some time to think about where you see yourself in a couple of years, and once you are done break these long-term goals into the more contained short-term goals and milestones you will use to get there. If you want to get the best effects and get a good incentive to keep pushing forward make your career and self-improvement goals SMART, or in other words:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Relevant
- Time-limited
Balance out private and professional life
Last but not least, we would like to mention that reaching the career goals you have set out in the last section should be your priority but not the absolute center of your universe. If you don’t balance out your private and professional life, you will burn out and compromise all the results you worked so hard to achieve. Some of the time management techniques will help you along the way. If you want to spend your free time in a more productive manner find some hobby that relates to your profession or try traveling. New experiences will broaden your horizons and make much more open-minded person.
So there you have it – top six tips that should help you to push your career forward and put yourself at the head of the pack. The present-day business world is very complex and frequent career changes have become a simple fact of life. That’s a good thing. Every new experience makes you a better person and a more skilled professional. So, use the suggestions we gave you and make sure that all things you have accomplished so far set the foundations for more accomplishments down the road.