Your success at work depends heavily on your ability to understand your skills and make them work for you in the industry you choose to work in.
7 Tactics to Boost Your Chances of Success at Work
- Take time to choose a career that is a good fit for your personality and interests. Dedicating yourself to a career that sounds lucrative or prestigious but brings you little pleasure will backfire eventually. Better to choose work that you feel a natural passion and interest towards. Your superiors will notice and reward your enthusiasm, and your personal interest will get you through challenges and tough times.
- Research your choices well. Online job boards have lots of good information about various careers, what they pay, and what is required to enter them. College placement departments and alumni associations are good resources as well. Check with the department of labor in your state and don’t forget your public library.
- Network aggressively. Make the most of social networking programs like LinkedIn and Facebook. Talk to everyone you meet about your career plans and ask for the names of three people who might be able to give you some advice, then follow through and call all three and ask for fifteen minutes of their time. Make sure you ask each of those people for more names as well. The best career opportunities are never advertised. Instead, the positions are filled through networking.
- Take an inventory of your skills and interests. Actually writing them down can help you identify fields of interest you might not have considered. A good exercise to try is to write down five things you would do today if you had no restrictions at all (money, time), then next to each of those things, write five related careers. You might be surprised at where your real interests lead you.
- List your accomplishments. Include all the things you have accomplished either on a job or in your personal life. Don’t forget volunteer work, creative projects, and community projects and associations. These can all help you discover what is most important to you in terms of finding a compatible career.
- Consider hiring a coach or a career counsellor. Professionals can help you break through if you are stuck in a work rut and can’t seem to see a way out or a way to make a lateral move. Career counsellors can be found at colleges, placement services, and even temporary agencies, and they are not necessarily expensive. A life coach will offer a more comprehensive perspective and will cost more than a counsellor. However, both can be helpful to get you moving to find career success.
Increasing Your Chances of Career Success
With so many people getting laid off day after day, how do you increase your chances of career success at work in this economy? You can secure your position and even be promoted, no matter how difficult the job market.
Here are some tips to ensure career success no matter what you do for a living:
Focus on your best feature and promote that relentlessly. If you are organized, make sure you volunteer for anything that showcases your organizational talent and make sure your boss knows about it.
Dress a notch above your rank. If you work in an office casual environment, wear a blazer or a skirt even though you don’t have to.
Keep a list of your accomplishments. Review it with your supervisor at regular intervals. If you don’t already have regular performance reviews, request them.
Include your immediate supervisor in your ambitions. Share where you want to go with your career and ask for that person’s advice and help. Supervisors rarely get asked for this kind of support and they usually want to provide it.
Under-promise and over-deliver. This is a very old strategy but it still works. Set goals you know you can reach and then exceed them.
Be aware of protocol and never go over your supervisor’s head. Be friendly and upbeat and keep shoptalk and complaining off-limits. A positive attitude goes a long way in today’s workplace.
Make sure you have one, and then ride it all the way to career success!
