Regardless of what industry or area you are in, you should always seek to take steps forward with your career. If you don’t, your income won’t improve, your job appreciation will dwindle, and your life-work balance will forever drain you.
So, take a step forward in your career, and if you need help with taking the most important one of all, that always being your next one, then make sure to take the advice below.
Get your references in check
Without a good reference, no matter how talented or skilled you may be, you will not get that promotion or new job that you crave. This is because references contain key information provided by the person who knows your working capabilities better than most, your most recent boss or manager, and that sort of information, from that sort of source, says more about you than you could ever say about yourself.
References can make or break your application to take the next step in your career, so you should ensure your most recent employer writes a good one about you. This means working hard, arranging a settlement agreement that is healthy for all involved, offering mandatory notice and not leaving on a bad note.
Start your new work before you start working
If you want to hit the ground running in your new role, then you need to start it before your first day on the jobs begins.
This means that you should brush up on all the knowledge needed to succeed in the role, which could mean taking a class on it; you should forge connections with all the people you will be working with, which could entail sending out appropriate emails that sell yourself; and you should buy all the equipment you are going to need, as well as getting used to using it all.
You don’t have to have officially started your new role in order to start preparing for it.
Make sure your presence is up to scratch
Every step that you take up your career ladder will bring with it a new type of person that you have to interact with, and your presence has to be up to scratch in order to interact with each of them properly.
To the point, the higher up you get in your career, the more executives you will meet. You might not like these people, and you might not enjoy working with them, but you should work on your executive presence anyway so that it reaches a level that matches theirs.
Interacting with others under this guise will make them trust you, and therefore make them more prone to giving you the opportunities you need for continued future growth. As mentioned, it’s not particularly what you know; it’s who you know.
When it comes to the next step in your career, heed the advice above to make sure it’s not a step backward. Most importantly, don’t be afraid to be a bit selfish at times, and don’t underestimate the importance of being brave.
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