Boosting your career development will require adequate plans and deliberate actions to drive your professional journey to the right path. This article will provide tips that will guide you in making the developmental process smooth.
With the rapid change in the employment market, keeping up with the trends and direction of your industry is crucial to improving your career.
For consistent career development, staying competitive to retain your job will help you remain relevant in your industry. Without these calculated and planned actions, you might experience stunted career growth and eventually get left out.
Career development involves a strong focus on improving your skills, consistent personal growth, gaining multiple work experiences and constantly expanding your professional network.
However, if you don’t know how to advance your career, you’ll find yourself going in circles for years when you should be an industry leader.
That’s why we have carefully put together this article. It will provide you with proven tips to help boost your career development, no matter your current professional stage.
Also Read: 5 Reasons Getting A Side Hustle Might Be Your Best Financial Move
7 Proven Tips You Require To Boost Your Career Development
Career development is like the ladder that helps you reach one milestone to another in your career and helps you stay equipped as you go on. Below are seven proven tips created by experts to help you boost your career development at every stage of your professional journey.
1. Consistent Upskilling
With ever-changing industry trends and technology, it’s crucial to stay up-to-date to boost your career development, and you can only achieve this by upskilling.
We spoke extensively about upskilling in one of our recent articles and how it impacts your career growth and development. You can find it here.
When you engage in upskilling and initiatives, you enhance your current skill sets and also increase your competitive edge in the job market. Career development is directly linked to upskilling, hence the need to constantly improve your skills.
2. Improve your soft skill
To boost your career development, you need to either acquire your soft skills or improve your current ones. These skills include leadership, critical thinking, problem-solving, adaptability, teamwork and emotional intelligence.
These above qualities will make you more competitive in today’s job market and prepare you for leadership and managerial positions.
When you’re the teammate who encourages others to give you feedback on your performance and use it constructively to improve your attitude and approach to work.
Developing your communication skills will also give you strengthen your competitive edge in your industry or workplace.
3. Set Career Goals
Boosting your career development is not rocket science, but it not also a walk in the park. You need to adequately plan for every stage by setting realistic career goals for yourself at every stage.
Use SMART guidelines to set your goals. This guideline will you create effective goals and trackable results and growth.
Setting goals will help put your growth and career into perspective. After setting the goals, set aside time to evaluate your progress and redefine your goals as necessary.
You can either divide the goals into either weekly, monthly, quarterly or yearly.
4. Don’t Stop Networking
Meeting new people while nurturing your current professional relationship plays a huge role in boosting your career development. Networking will open you up to new professional and learning opportunities, which will contribute to your career development and growth.
You can start networking by attending conferences or events that relate to your field, joining online professional networking groups, joining masterclasses or joining a professional association to meet industry experts and leaders.
5. Timely Portfolio Update
As your career develops and you attain new milestones, there’s a need to update your portfolio. From LinkedIn to your CV and other portfolio formats, there’s a need to share updates on your career to boost your development and chances in the job market.
As you share your most current skills and experiences, your chance of getting a better job and a higher position.
6. Get Mentored
Getting a career mentor directly impacts your career development. A mentor will help guide your career, providing you with advice and encouragement, along with helping you set your goals and offering feedback.
The career mentor of your choosing could be a member of your professional network, your current manager or a former manager.
7. Improve Online Presence
Boost your career development by improving your online presence. Figure out what makes you unique in your industry and sell it.
Make sure you build a brand for yourself by sharing the uniqueness of your skills with the world. It puts you in a position where you’re seen and relevant in your industry.
At Dexter, we do not only offer skill acquisition to help your career development but also mentoring. All you need to do is scan the barcode to find out how you can be part of our community.
