Put down that juicy burger with extra cheese and spare a thought about your career. A fully competent professional is someone who has mastered and outgrown his or her job. Are you a fully competent professional? Do you believe you have outgrown your job role? Are you looking to move up to the next level in your profession?
If you answered yes to these questions, you are due for a promotion and/or it is time to progress to the next level or two in your profession. Movement requires risk. To feel a forward momentum in your career, you must take risks.
In this case, I’m talking about measured risks. To move significantly forward, we must feel some fear at some point. Let’s say an opportunity comes your way. If you feel some fear and a mixture of excitement, that might a be sign of an opportunity for you to move significantly forward.
Right now you may be feeling as though you are in a dead end job. In truth, however, there are no dead end jobs, since all jobs act as a stepping stones to get to the next level. Rather, it is usually your own thinking and self-doubt that are haunting you and causing you to feel that you are stuck with this job for life and there is no way out.
But yes, it is true that you can get stuck in a job if you have nothing new to offer an employer. Does this apply to you? You can easily find out by evaluating what new skills, experiences and attributes you have acquired since taking on your current or last job role.
If you are serious about moving up the ranks, you will need to learn how to stay a step ahead of your competition. Ensure that you do not leave your industry self-development to your employer; rather, make sure that you are active in continuously working on improving yourself when it comes to the latest trends, terminologies, training and specialization schemes required in your industry.
You also need to get out there and network. As you start on your transition, you need a network that will give you some information, contacts or even at times opportunities for you to explore. Find some groups and join. Meet people in your industry. Networking is one of the best places to start. Talk to people online. Some of them might be people to get your career off the ground.
Those who do this are the ones who effortlessly get jobs and set the standard by which all other job applicant candidates are evaluated and judged as competent or not for a specific job role.
There are no shortage of people who hate their current job. Monday mornings are cringe worthy for many…Is it that you hate the job or industry? Sometime we hold on excuses and stereotypes and we play average.
We are the ones who refute the idea of a societal deemed far fetched dream career with something along the lines of “I wanted to be a super model but genetics just weren’t good to me,” or worse, the one in your head who is buying into a stereotype as to why you’re unable to have the career you desire.
Stereotypes only exist because a number of people buy into them but they can be crippling for your psyche in pursuing a change in your career.
Remember, it is an employer’s market. You therefore need to develop industry-specific and job market-specific highly tuned skills to ensure you gain the edge over your competitors.