Upgrade Your Skills to Upgrade Your Career
By Seleena Juma
No matter which profession we’re in, most people’s careers follow a fairly linear path where compensation slowly increases as we gain more experience and develop our skill set. After all, what we get paid is largely a reflection of our experience, abilities, and ultimately what we’re able to provide to an employer.
So to earn more, it usually follows that we have to be able to offer an employer more in terms of what we can do for them. While experience only comes with time, we do have more control over the skills we’re able to offer. If you’re looking to jumpstart your career and not only earn more money, but also gain responsibility, a better title and do more meaningful work, then upgrading your skills is one of the best ways to go about doing that. In this article, we’ll show you how.
Choose Your Own Adventure
It used to be that companies clearly defined roles and growth within their organization and had very specific paths employees followed in order to be promoted. Today, with an increasingly dynamic and changing workforce, companies are more open to less ‘defined’ succession planning. In fact, more and more, employers are engaging their employees and empowering them to take charge of their own advancement.
It’s important to take responsibility for your own career, and part of doing that is not only managing your career ‘today’, but also always considering the ‘tomorrow’ and the path you want your career to take. By doing this, you can determine what it will take to get there, and what areas of your skill set you’ll need to develop. Taking charge also ensures YOU are in control of the path your career takes and you don’t get promoted into a role that doesn’t fit with your career plan. Don’t let someone else choose your career path for you.
Finally, in determining what you need to get to where you want to be, be honest with yourself in assessing your own skills – pretending or convincing yourself that you have certain skills won’t help you.
Determine Skills That Are In Demand
If you’re truly looking to position yourself as a valuable employee - one that commands top dollar and recognition from your company - think about what skills are or will be most valuable to your employer and work on acquiring or enhancing those. For example, maybe your company is looking to make the leap into social media and they’ll need a person who understands how to build a community, blogging, and podcasting.
If you’re going to invest the time, money, and effort into bettering yourself for the purposes of professional advancement, then ensure you are learning skills that will get you that desired outcome. Developing a skill that has no relevance to an employer will likely do little in terms of helping to further your career.
Part of determining skills that are in demand is looking at those skills that few other people have. You might go and learn a relevant new skill, but if many others have it as well then the value to an employer is lessened since there’s an abundant supply. People that specialize in niche areas command top dollar because there’s fewer people who can do what they do. As long as you know in advance that there’s demand for these skills, then it’s this type of learning that can have the greatest payoff.
Better Skills Lead to Better Experience
It’s that famous Catch 22 – you can’t get the experience if you don’t have the skills, and you can’t develop the skills without the experience. Except you can. People forget that your job isn’t the only place where you can develop your skill set and acquire experience.
The great thing is, as you develop your skills and prove that you can offer more, you’ll probably find you’ll be given the opportunity to contribute on bigger projects and take on more responsibility. So while your years of experience might be the same as other people, the level of experience will set you apart – and ultimately it’s the quality of your experience and what you’ve done in that time that matters most to employers.
So even though you started out by simply upgrading your skills, the end result ends up being beneficial in two ways - you’ve upgraded you skill set, but you now also have better experience to go along with it.
Involve Your Company
While your career path and progression are ultimately your own responsibility, it is absolutely recommended to involve your manager or employer if you have certain aspirations or goals you’re looking to achieve within your present company. By starting a dialogue with your employer and being transparent with your intentions, you only increase your chances of reaching your goals.
If your employer knows you’re working towards acquiring a certain skill that will be valuable to them, then it only makes sense that they would want to help you learn it. If your goal is increased responsibility within your current role or a promotion within the company – have that conversation with your boss and approach it with an action plan. Get your boss on board and make it an open dialogue. Generally, any steps you take that demonstrate initiative and add value will gain the support of your employer.
Resist the temptation to ask self-serving questions at all costs. Inquiring about how long lunch is or how many sick days you get will communicate to them that you’re only interested in what you can get out of the job. ‘A-Players’ are high achievers that are primarily concerned with achieving great results. Keep your questions geared towards attaining results.
Sources of Learning
So we’ve talked about why upgrading your skill set is a good idea, and how to integrate it into your career plan. Now the question is WHERE to turn to learn these skills that will give you that edge. The following are all great options for improving your skills:
- College & University Classes – Depending on what you’re looking to learn and whether you’re learn more high-level theory in a certain area or you want applicable hands-on experience, classes at nearby Colleges and Universities are a great option for further learning. They also look good and are widely recognized on your resume.
- Professional Organizations – Often times local professional organizations related to your industry will offer various courses or programs that help to further your experience and education within a certain discipline.
- Conferences & Seminars – Attending conferences and seminars is another great way of learning relevant new skills. Depending on the conference or seminar itself, some are more geared towards actual learning and teaching than others, but they offer a great opportunity to learn from proven industry professionals. Some conferences and seminars can be expensive, but there are many out there that are reasonably priced as well – some are even free! If there’s something you’d like to attend and the cost is holding you back, inquire if your company would be willing to help out with the registration fees to make it more feasible for you. Many companies have money allocated in their budgets for just this reason.
- Cross-Functional Experience at Work – An easy way to get specific experience is to request it at your current job! Ask your manager if you can help out in a department or on a project that relates to what you’re looking to learn. As long as you’re able to keep up with your usual responsibilities, most employers are happy to grant their employees this opportunity. It gives them a more diverse workforce and adds to overall job satisfaction.
An Ongoing Commitment
In an increasingly competitive marketplace, it’s imperative to keep yourself ahead of the game. Be proactive about fine-tuning existing skills, and adding new ones that differentiate you from the rest and give you the competitive edge you need to stay ahead.
The best way to change your career path from a flat plateau to an upward arrow headed for the sky is to make an ongoing commitment to keep bettering yourself. While unfortunately you can’t fast forward into the future in terms of how much experience you have, you can control what you have to offer and the type of experience you’ve had – usually more important than the ‘how much’. The end result will be a more rewarding career that brings along better experience and pay with it.
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As a Consultant, Seleena Juma works in partnership with some of the brightest minds in the legal, financial services, and media industries.
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