To improve your career there are many actions that you can take right now.
You probably have thought about big things when it comes to your career. However, to achieve these can sometimes feel impossible from where you are today.
It’s important that you get the most of our career right now. This will help you to put yourself in the best position for the next step of your career. Some of the actions to improve your career are small changes you can make to improve your professional life.
By working daily on improving these aspects of yourself, you will be sure to better your career in the short and long term.
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(Related: How To Approach 2020 With a Growth Mindset)
10 Actions To Improve Your Career Right Now
Use these action to improve your career right now. Implement them into your daily life to continually better yourself from the person you were yesterday.
1. Take Initiative
In today’s career market everyone is vying for the next opportunity to better themselves. Therefore, if you want to stand out among your peers and have a slight advantage you should take initiative.
Take initiative on speaking up in meetings, proposing solutions to problems, taking on new projects, developing skills that will help you be expert in your role.
Take initiate and your bosses will notice, your coworkers will notice, and your future career will thank you. Organizations want employers to do more than just what their roles say. They want you to step up to the plate and take on new task to expand your scope and abilities.
Make small changes that allow you to take initiative in your career.
2. Communicate Effectively
Communication is one of the most important skills to have. Whether this is verbal communication, written communication or just your interpersonal skills.
Whether you work in an office, in the field, or remotely, communication is going to be vital to improving your career success.
Verbal:
- Speaking up in meetings
- Presenting more captivatingly
Written:
- Send meaningful and concise emails
- Become expert in report writing/memos
Interpersonal:
- Learn best communication style for different coworkers
- Be an active listener. And respond accordingly
Practice improving your communication skills. This will become more important as you take on more responsibility in your career.
3. Self-Evaluate
Self-evaluation is important to improve your career at every step of your journey.
You should to have aiming self-evaluation as well as evaluations (performance reviews) through work.
Self-evaluation can take place at any time. Think of it as focusing on your inward self improvement. You are going to have goals that you set to help you improve your career. It’s important that you write down your goals. This makes them more tangible and also makes you more likely to work towards them.
Writing down your goals allows you to measure your progress towards them. This is important in the self-evaluation process as it helps you better understand what you did right and the shortcomings during the period evaluated.
Additionally, goals change as life progresses, so self-evaluation can help you make the right pivots in your career.
Don’t wait to self-evaluate. Set up this practice in your life today.
(Related: 2020 Goal Setting For Public Health Students)
4. Make A 1-Year Plan
Much like self-evaluation, having a written 1-year plan can really help to improve your career prospects.
Sometimes envisioning a plan for yourself 3 or 5 years out can be difficult. This is why I say focus on the 1-year plan to give your the motivation for the current career trajectory you want.
This plan should be a document that states what you want to achieve within the next year and what achievements you want to make. And the action steps you have to do to achieve these goals. This can be broken out by month or week to make it more meaningful for your daily actions.
If you don’t know where you want to go then any path will get you there. Conversely, knowing where you want to go helps you get aligned with the best steps to reach there.
Make a 1-year plan that highlights the goals that you want to achieve in the next 12 months.
5. Stretch Yourself
When you get comfortable in any role, you tend to slack off and stop constant improvement.
Comfort can be detrimental to your career. Because when you become too comfortable then you know you are not pushing yourself to learn more and grow. Whenever you master a skill, you should not just stop there, learn about your weaknesses and try to improve on them.
By constantly pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone, you will learn more about yourself. Your strengths, weaknesses, and places for improvement.
You don’t have to master all skills, but having a good understanding of skills outside your typical role can be instrumental in your career progression.
Take on that unfamiliar task, offer yourself for work that isn’t directly tied to your role, push yourself in harder projects.
6. Do Real Networking
Real networking is about building relationships – it is not a one way street. Make sure your networking is grounded in what you can do for others. When you look at networking from the perspective of solely asking for help from someone, it is not effective.
When networking you should:
- Have a goal in mind (have a purpose)
- Make a list of contacts
- Match list to how you can help them
- Be respectful of others time
- Try to give value in someway
Though there are different levels to networking and different approaches. You should always aim to provide value to the person and work at nurturing your relationship.
Remember networking does’t end with a new job, but is an ongoing process during your career. You can also work on networking relationships with recruiters which can pay dividends for your next career move.
7. Get A Mentor
Getting a mentor doesn’t always have to be a formal endeavor. Mentorship is a way to get advice from someone who is in a position you want to be in or just has valuable information on how to help you navigate your career.
A mentor can help you understand your field, navigate your career path, give you insights and even help you expand your network. Mentorship can be formal or informal depending on your relationship.
Need feedback? Use a mentor. Need someone to bounce new ideas off of? Use a mentor. Need an introduction to someone? A mentor can help you with that.
Use mentorship to your advantage to learn more about your field and help you progress in your career.
8. Get Familiar With Your Industry
Though you can accomplish familiarity with your industry through networking and mentorship. These are not the only ways.
You should aim to be a student of your industry. This way you’ll be continually learning and being on top of the changes occurring in your industry.
Aim to ask questions to your managers and colleagues. Use LinkedIn to solicit responses on questions you have about your industry. If you learnt that a certain skillset is becoming more valuable in your field, now you have the opportunity to learn this skill to market yourself for future jobs.
You should use this knowledge to develop insights into the industry that will help you better navigate your future career moves.
Additionally, you can follow newsletters relevant to your field.
If you are in the public health field – sign up for The Public Health Millennial Newsletter below.
Aim to always know whats happening in your industry – stay on top of the knowledge and skills that will be important for your career success.
9. Take A Course
Having a job doesn’t mean that you should limit your learning opportunities. Don’t let your skills become stagnant. Work towards mastering your skills and developing new skills as your career progresses.
Many times you can feel unmotivated because you feel like you are stuck. A great way to get out of this rut is to take courses. This will help you to either refine or develop the skills that will be important for you to take the next step in your career.
Ask your employer about courses you can take. Alternatively, sites like LinkedIn Learning have made taking courses much more accessible.
Taking a course may be the thing that sets you apart from a peer time comes for promotions. Or it may just help you to get a hefty pay raise.
Whatever your desired career, you should focus on continually developing your skills whether is through a course or other experiences.
10. Create A Productive Routine
Getting the best out of your career starts with the habits that you develop in your life. Routines are built from the habits that we have in life. Therefore, you should be aiming to have as many productive habits in your daily life.
Advancing in your career can be a challenge. It can be an even bigger challenge when you don’t have the routine that keeps you healthy and wanting to learn and grow more.
You should really aim to have habits built into your routine that assist in your life. These could be:
- Morning run
- Going to the gym after work
- Reading for an hour a day
- Meditating for 30 minutes daily
- Having daily positive affirmations
A productive routine will help you to reach your goals quicker by cutting out the important stuff.
Find a routine that works best for your life and stick to it . Start with one good habit and build on that.
(Related: Why You Need These 3 Hobbies In Life)
Bonus Tips To Improve Your Career
Know your worth
It’s always important to know your worth throughout your career. You should never be underpaid for your position. Use websites like Glassdoor and personal contact to find out what comparable job roles are getting paid.
Knowing your worth helps you to better leverage money for your next pay raise or helps you in salary negotiations at new organizations.
You should always know the trajectory of your industry and what different are average salaries for different positions.
Consider contract work
Another way to boost your career prospectives is to consider contract or freelance work. Contract work can help you to earn more income, expand your network, and try your hand at new projects.
This can be used as a side hustle which has the potential to become your main hustle. Or it can just be used to make some extra cash on the side.
Before doing this, ensure that it is okay with your employer that you do freelance or contract work. You can either refer to your employee manual or your HR representative.
Summary To Improve Your Career
Improving your career should be an ongoing process where you continue to develop yourself. Set goals for yourself, but remember that goals can change as your career develops. This is why it is important to develop the skills to set yourself apart from the competition.
This article walks you through 12 actionable steps you can take to improve your career now. Whether you are looking for a new job, currently employed or entering into the workforce, your career can always be improved.
You should be aiming to continually improve yourself during your career. This article should be able to help you to begin on that journey on self-development for your short and long term career success.
What actions are you taking to improve your career?
