Building a career has always been a demanding task. Looking at our parent’s and grandparent’s generations, they still had a luxury of spending their entire professional life within one company. Nowadays, we can only dream about something like this. We have to arm ourselves with knowledge and top up our skills in order to stay on top of the ever-growing offer on the job market.

DIY advancement

If you feel like you want to or need to know more, dedicate some of your free time to light reading. There are a lot of resources available in magazines as well as online. This will allow you to update your knowledge and find out news from the industry. Target the performance issues you have at work and ask your manager or colleagues to assist you with improving them. You can get theoretical knowledge through reading and you can shadow their work to see how you can apply the strategies you have learned.

Attend seminars

Ask your managers at work to keep you updated on any seminars, conferences, and workshops organized by the company or offered to the company.  Company seminars are usually very closely related to either your job position or the industry and are well selected. Employers usually do not mind giving days off work for this purpose. After attending one of these you can get some professional points or a certificate which can add to your resume.

Training courses

Find out what it is required for you to climb the corporate ladder. Furthermore, every so often explore the ads for jobs available in your industry. Estimate what the greatest demand is for and which skills you need to have to be able to fulfill that demand. Look for the courses available so you can improve your formal and practical knowledge. Sometimes it can be very hard to find enough free time or fit the class schedule with your work or private life. This is the reason why online courses are usually more popular with employed people. Taking online classes after work or on the weekends might be more convenient and you won’t waste time getting there. After attending an accredited course you can usually get a recognized certificate which can improve your formal qualifications.

Language

The technology today has allowed companies to move from a local into a global market. Businesses now trade worldwide and it is no longer rare to have two companies from different sides of the world in a shared ventures or in a partnership. Knowing the language of your associates can be the key difference between giving a certain position to you or someone else. Also, a lot of people travel for work and find themselves surrounded by professional and personal challenges when stuck in a foreign land without being able to communicate. Providers of SCE English Courses in Sydney say that pretty much all of their students have either moved to Australia for work or are accompanying their parents or partners who have moved to Sydney following a job opportunity.

General people skills

Learning social and people skills is what will make you into a great employee and potentially a great manager and a great leader. Apart from seeking professional training, you probably want to learn how to better yourself as a person working under pressure and how to avoid stress. Also, you can learn how to manage people, how to challenge people, learn to organize your time and delegate. The fact that you have done the training probably won’t go into your resume unless you re from one of the related professions, however, it will make you into a person who your supervisor will recognize as naturally good for the job. Your new skills will not escape the notice.

Conclusion

Having a career today involves constant advancement. You are lucky if your character and natural abilities recommend you with your employees, the rest you need to work on constantly. Some professions such as teachers, doctors, university professors have standards imposed which require of them to keep in touch with scientific improvements. Others should choose to do the same even if it is not compulsory as it will keep them in sync with the current trends. Luckily, apart from the intentional advancement, there is the unintentional one, so even if you do not have enough time to level up, you will learn from your own experience.