Career Development
If you’re interested in climbing the career ladder, it’s so important that you set goals for yourself. It’s far too easy to get comfortable in a role, and enjoy that feeling of knowing what you’re doing.
If you’re keen to progress, you’ll find you’ll start getting disengaged with the role, and so it’s better to look forwards to your next opportunity before you reach that point.
Look at the ladder you’re on and what steps are in front of you, try to set time frames of how long you want it to take you to progress to each level.
Make sure your managers are aware that you want to progress and ask them what you can do to make yourself stand out above your colleagues and be the first in line for the next promotion when an opportunity arises.
You may even need to look at opportunities in other companies to make it possible, and include side steps into different markets.
You could even let local recruiters know that you’d be open to any opportunities they have available.
I always used to say every 6 months, either move up or move on.
Once I got a taste of responsibility, I knew that I wanted to progress up the career ladder quickly, which is why I set these goals.
It was ambitious… but in a really good way. And it worked!
It’s worth saying that this was in my earlier career, where moving jobs every six months wasn’t an issue. When I moved up to the senior roles, I decided I wanted to give more time to those jobs, so 6 months turned into 1 year, 2 years, etc.
It meant I was always working towards the next step. If I liked the role I was in and the company, I would try to progress internally. If I didn’t like the company, I would apply for a role elsewhere.
In some cases, I liked the company, but I wasn’t successful applying for a promotion, so I applied for similar roles externally and either switched companies, or leveraged the offers I had in the company I was in.
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