By Dorcas Karuana,
How well do you take charge of your career growth? Do feel you deserve better this New Year 2020 and desire to unlock your full career potential? As a professional you want to get good and well-paying job, promotion or salary increment for your skills and experience, and strongly be in charge of your professional life.
How do you achieve this? A Career growth does not just happen. All successful professionals will tell you one thing called investing in your own career. Investing in your career means being deliberate to have a career plan with clear short term and long term goals, investing in professional growth to develop your skills, playing office politics, having mentors as well as knowing your value. As a professional you must therefore strategically enhance your career mobility and be strongly in charge of their professional life.
Here are four ways to help you discover how to achieve your top career goals as you start off year 2020
1.How is your network? – You should always find new people and be around them. With the right professional network it is easier to get jobs through referrals. Are you willing to invest in clubs, professional associations, seminars e.t.c or buying a boss lunch? More so, always work on expanding your social circle and you will get to know more people this way. When you know more people, the chances of you meeting someone important or a potential business client are much greater.
The common mistake is to only start networking once an employee has been retrenched or laid off from their full-time job. You should avoid this by learning to take interest in what others are doing for a living. You can even learn from them the different experiences and perspectives they face in their industry. The true lesson is to always talk to people and finding out about them.
2. Have a Professional CV/ Cover Letter- A cover letter and CV is a ticket to a job interview. This is what the employer uses to judge if you qualify for a job. With a poor crafted cover letter or CV then you will never hear from an employer. So if you do not get any feedback after many job applications then your CV or Cover letter could be the problem. Are you ready to pay for a professional CV, Cover letter, career guidance or interview preparation? If not then you keep repeating the same mistakes in your career. You will never grow.
A cover letter should answer why you are the best candidate for the position while a CV should show what you are to offer for that particular post. Both should be carefully written with the most important things coming first in a chronological manner. They should create a Wow! To the employer who will want to meet the person for an interview.
3. Always keep on expanding your knowledge – Keep reading more and improve yourself. Reading a good book; whether professional, motivational or politics, history, geography, every week or month is a great habit. Everyone should be cultivating this habit as well. Successful people have made learning an aspect of their lifestyle. The more you learn, the higher the efficiency and so is your performance. Learning is and has to be ongoing throughout your lifetime.
You should even consider taking a self-improvement course. Often times, people can assess themselves better and as a result, perform better at work. You have to work on improving your knowledge base.
4. Have a problem with existing state of affairs- ie.status-quo. Most people get to a status quo immediately after getting a job. The do not think of career advancement or even plan for it. They want to keep things unchanged and the way they are. Though making change is like taking a risk have a balance when undergoing certain risks in your career as an employee. But you should never want to take too much of a risk at the same time.
Dorcas is the Head of Recruitment at Corporate Manpower East Africa. Email: dorcas(at)corporatemanpower.co.ke