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How do I advance my career?

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Posted by Your Guide on September 27, 2005 10:25 AM

This is where the rubber meets the road. You know where you are, you know where you want to go—now how do you get there? How do you take you career from where it is to where you want it to be? Define your goals, whether they include obtaining additional responsibilities, taking a different job, or achieving personal goals for your current job and then get moving.


  • Stand out as an employee: If you want additional responsibilities or a promotion, show that you deserve them by your performance at your current job. Take initiative to see and meet company needs. Go the extra mile. Don’t complain about your job. Get results.
  • Stand out as a person: Your career is not an area in which the ends justify the means, so watch your character even more carefully than you watch your career. Build quality relationships with the people around you through your friendship and care. Share credit for successes and accept responsibility for your failures. Be honest and ethical.
  • Protect your career: Make yourself indispensable to your company by staying on the cutting edge of the industry and exhibiting a continued willingness to learn. Show that you are able to adapt to new opportunities and responsibilities by using all of your diverse skills and demonstrating a willingness to tackle new and challenging projects.
  • Network: If you want your job to change or advance, stay in touch with the people involved in those kinds of decisions. Maintain professional and friendly relationships with superiors, peers, and subordinates. This does not mean brownnosing, but simply working in light of the goals of the company, as well as the qualities of individual superiors and peers.

Again, advancing your career does not necessarily mean a promotion, though it may. Advancing your career simply means continually looking for a more meaningful job, which often means simply looking for additional challenges or responsibilities in the job you have. If you don’t want your job to change, focus yourself on improving your performance. Advancing your career is the never-ending final stage of career management, and it will look different for each person based on that person’s goals, passions, and skills. Career management, after all, is a lifelong process—your career is not an area in which you want to grow complacent.



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