Top 10 Steps To Catapult Your Career Up The Corporate Ladder
Every career success story is unique. While there isnt a magic answer for taking your career to the top, following these ten steps will get you headed up the corporate ladder.
1. Reassess your career. Is your career path well aligned with your priorities and interest? Do you posses, or can you acquire, the experience and education to be successful? If not, consider a lateral move and work your way up from there.
2. Clearly define your career goals. Only when you know exactly where it is you want to go, will you be able to map out your plan to get there.
3. Create a development plan. Determine the steps you need to take for your next promotion. Include resources and due dates. Schedule these activities in your planner and follow through.
4. Communicate your career goals with management. If you work in an organization that promotes employee development, communicate your goals with your manager and ask for his or her support. If you are concerned about resistance, find a mentor within the organization that you can trust.
5. Volunteer to spearhead a new project. This shows initiative, puts you in a visible position, and builds new skills. It also gives you the opportunity to showcase your leadership skills.
6. Stay current in your field. Read industry publications and reports. Be aware of changing trends and position yourself accordingly.
7. Take classes or obtain a certification. Use your industry knowledge to your advantage. Take a course in an up and coming area or a specialty that will benefit your organization and give you an edge over the competition.
8. Assume a leadership role. Offer to mentor a junior associate in your organization, apply for a position on a local board, or chair a committee for a nonprofit organization.
9. Network, Network, Network. Within your organization and within the community. Increasing your visibility and gaining contacts are vital to your success when climbing the corporate ladder. No one ever got to the top alone.
10. Excel in your current position. Exceptional performance speaks for itself. You wont get ahead with mediocre performance, regardless of how many other steps you implement.
There are few things in the world quite as exciting as moving overseas and trying to get a job. Starting a new career overseas can be difficult but if you follow some key steps it is not half as hard as some would have you believe. The very first thing that you need to do is find out the rules of hiring in this other country. Each country had it own distinct set of regulations, some of these can even vary within a country by state or province. Find out everything before you even start to apply for jobs.
You will find that international resumes are often referred to as a CV. So if you get this word thrown at you, dont worry, it is just a fancy word for resumes
The next thing that you need to do is create your international resume. This is vital to your career success overseas. Without a good international resume you will not stand a chance of getting hired anywhere no matter what your qualifications happen to be. This resume too will depend on to county in which you are searching for a job.
Before you send out your CV make sure that this is really what you want to do. Moving to another country and getting work is a huge step and it is one that is going to cost you a fair bit of money. Do you have the money for all of the moving expenses and the travel expenses? If not then your CV, no matter how good it is will not get you very far. Think about what you are doing and see if it is really what you need to do in order to further your career. There are many ways to make life better and this may or may not be the right choice for you, just make sure that you have thought it through well before you make any big changes.
Is job-hopping and career success related to each other? What is the effect of one on the other? How long is too long for staying in a company? I must admit, the resumes that pass by my desk makes me conclude that job-hopping is far too common.
Job hoppers do it for various reasons. More often than not they may not know what they are getting into. Sometimes, it is because they do not know what they want and hence are not ready for the challenges that lay ahead of them. Job-hopping and career success is related to one another.
In my opinion, job-hopping affects career success in a negative manner. Consider this, what signals are you sending to your potential employer if you job-hop too often?
The Two-Year Rule
I have a two-year rule that I tell my staff and potential employees. The two-year rule is this you must be willing to commit mentally to spend at least two years in the company before you quit. The reason is this; you need to deal with the learning curve. If you job-hop too often, you learn nothing substantial.
For me, it takes you at least a year to know the ins and outs of the company. Then another year before you can eventually be truly productive in adding value to the company. To see the true results of your contribution to the company, for me it takes at least two years. So, if you are prone to job-hopping and career success is on your mind, then it is time to rethink.
Training You
Many well-established companies have training programs. They are willing to invest in fresh graduates and newbies. However, in order for them to make that decision they need to look at past track records. Ask yourself, if you are a manager who are you more likely to invest training time and money on? Someone who is job-hopper and shows tendency to job-hop or someone who is stable? Companies are more likely to invest in people who are stable. The reason is simple. They are able to contribute back into the company. Everybody wins. If you are constantly job-hopping, you send a signal that you are not ready to commit.
Companies like to invest in people who see their career goals align with their corporate goals. Job-hoppers usually cannot see their career path beyond the next year.
Decreasing the Incidence of Job-Hopping
One of the best ways to quit job-hopping is to truly know what you want. Once you know that, you will have singular focus in the pursuit of your career goals. Of course, it is understandable that as a fresh graduate or newbie at work it is tough to know that. You may be interested in some other industries.
If there are other fields that you are interested in then make a plan to find out about them. Start with the Internet, and then ask friends who may know people in those fields. Speak to them; ask them about the expectations of the company and the role of the position you are interested in.
You may not have all the answers but at least you get some idea. That would decrease the chances of you job-hopping.
Make Learning a Key Objective
If you are new in the work force and have been job-hopping quite a bit, my advice to you is this – truly find out what you want. Once you know that, find a company that is willing to train or how they are willing to commit to their employees career in the long term. If they have structured training programs, join them.
Make learning the relevant skills and knowledge in that industry your key objective. The skills and knowledge that you learn will contribute to your career success in the long term. It is something that you can bring with you the rest of your life. Once you see the benefits of committing to a company who is willing to train you for more than two years, hopefully you wont be job-hopping often anymore.
I dont recall exactly how many girls turned me down when I asked them to the senior prom, but there were a few. Even though that was 25 years ago, I still remember how much I wished I was one of the beautiful people. Today, Im glad I wasnt. When I finally made it to the major leagues of my industry, two things immediately struck me.
The first was how accepting everyone was. People were amazingly supportive and oddly non-competitive. I later realized this came from their sense of security and accomplishment, since successful people dont feel threatened by others who succeed. The second thing was that most of the powerful and famous people I met looked like ordinary average individuals, even though some of them get more for a one hour speech than many people pay for a house. This made me wonder how much ones looks really impacts career success.
Being attractive can certainly help in the short term. Television news magazines such as 2020 have conducted tests which confirm that society gives special consideration to attractive people. However, being so attractive that one draws excessive attention to him or herself can impede long term career success. Beauty can become the temporary crutch that some people try to keep leaning on long after it has been taken away. While attractive people can skate by on looks for a while, eventually beauty fades. They may then struggle when its gone and they can no longer charm people with their million pound smile. Meanwhile, their average looking counterparts start to excel in their careers because their greatest assets their job skills are increasing.
This success principle of what matters most is whats on the inside isnt limited to work. It also applies to personal relationships. While the newest glamour couple here in my hometown of Nashville is the equally attractive Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban, not every pretty woman goes for the handsome leading man look. Just look at Lyle Lovett, who married Julia Roberts in 1993, and Billy Bob Thornton, who married Angelina Jolie in 2000. Both Thornton and Lovett readily admit they dont have Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise looks. The one thing they needed to get these beautiful women to say yes was the same thing that made their careers so successful confidence.
So whats the moral of this story? If you happen to be an ordinary average looking individual whos competing against a job applicant or coworker who has drop dead gorgeous looks, dont assume they have an advantage. It could turn out that looking average helps you become more than average in your career.
What do employers look for in potential employees? That was the question that was posted recently on a career discussion forum online. Naturally, for each different position, the particular answers to that question would be different. However, there are some common skills that employers look for in all employees, whether the employee happens to be a network engineer or a fry cook.
In-Demand Skills for Success
1. BASIC SKILLS Reading, writing and arithmetic! Believe it or not, a good portion of high school graduates (and some college grads) do not read at an 8th grade level and cannot do multiplication in their head. Employers are seeking employees who can read well, can write coherently, and who can calculate mathematics in a business environment (fractions, percentages, etc.) Add to that the modern basic skills of keyboarding skill, basic computer knowledge, and ability to use most computerized tools (e.g. fax machine, basic word processing program, etc.) to round out the basic skill sets needed for employment success.
2. PERSONAL SKILLS Can a potential employee speak well? Can heshe answer questions of customers in a positive, informative manner? Can the prospect provide good customer service? While not everyone has an outgoing sales’ personality, successful employees can communicate in a non-confrontational, positive manner with their coworkers, team members, subordinates, management, and customers. Being able to work well with others is a vital skill for success in all jobs.
3. JOB ATTAINMENT Job search is a process that requires a great deal of dedication and attention to be conducted successfully. It follows the old principal that many veteran programmers refer to as GIGO Garbage In, Garbage Out. If you put lousy effort in, you will receive lousy results. Employers are seeking employees who know how to present themselves in a positive manner and who display enthusiasm and knowledge about the companies they approach. Not only do candidates get evaluated on their skills and experience, but also on how they are approaching the job search. Enthusiastic candidates with fewer skills have an even chance of getting the job as dull candidates with better skills.
4. JOB SURVIVAL Now there’s a hot topic in this period of layoffs. Who gets the ax and who doesn’t is often a matter of numbers, but it is also often a matter of performance. Employees who have consistently demonstrated their worth, taken initiative, and made themselves a valuable asset to the company have lower incidences of being downsized than employees who put forth mediocre or average effort in their jobs. Surviving within a company through layoffs or moving up the career ladder is a success skill that is learned and is consciously cultivated among successful professionals.
5. PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT As all high tech and engineering pros know it’s learn or burn in today’s work environment. Attaining new skills, applying new concepts, updating established skills is an absolute necessity to succeed in today’s work force. The successful individual is constantly attending seminars, taking classes, attaining training on new products or releases, and otherwise learning new skills that will keep them marketable in their careers. Successful people are lifelong learners. Employers are looking for people who have the training necessary to fulfill their needs.
6. CAREER DEVELOPMENT Career Development differs from Professional Development. Professional Development is learning while Career Development is a planning and goal setting process. Successful individuals design a career plan with written goals for short term and long term. They lay out the steps needed to move their careers from Point A to Point B within Time Frame C and plan how they are going to achieve those steps. Successful people have someone to whom they are accountable for their progress and who will monitor their success in achieving their goals. Employers are seeking individuals who (believe it or not) wish to commit to the company for a long period of time. Good career progression is a high selling point of candidates to prospective employers.
How do you measure up? Do you have the 6 In-Demand Skills for Success? Feel like you need some help? Give us a call!