Stop the career cobwebs

Cobwebs are a sign of staleness and usually found in ceilings but trust me cobwebs can grow in your career too if you ‘stay put’; content to do what you’ve always done day in day out. Here are some tips for preventing cobwebs from stalling your career.

AVOID THE DAY TO DAY APPROACH: When you think about your work-life only day to day, you lose sight of what you need to do today to better your future or indeed what the long term impact of your day to day decisions are likely to be. For example, if you are a supervisor wanting to become manager, you need to understand what is required of a manager and start demonstrating potential at that level; even find a mentor to guide you so that when an opening comes you’re ready to apply. Be smart day to day but strategic in planning your advancement long term.

DON’T SIT ON YOUR LAURELS: If your proudest achievements happened more than two years ago, you’re courting cobwebs. Be proud of your successes but don’t stay stuck reminiscing over them. Research shows that employers look at a CV for an average of 10 seconds so you’ve got to make sure you have fresh accomplishments to include annually. Never settle, demand more of yourself and move to your next level so that you can present yourself always in a positive light.

DEVELOP A SPIRIT OF EXCELLENCE: Learn to do a couple of things very well so that you can always reflect excellence in some aspect of what you do. Continually learn and acquire new knowledge so that you demonstrate you are abreast of trends or developments in your field. Be known as a person who’s principled, does their best and learns from their mistakes.

TREAT EVERYONE WITH RESPECT: As they say’ what goes round comes around.’ The power of what others have to say about you can sometimes make or break you. If you don’t like someone for whatever reason don’t let it show and don’t say bad things about them behind their back- it could come back to bite you. Be gracious and generous with your comments about other people.

Now take action: Where in your career do you need some new successes?