Your career is one of the biggest ingredients to a satisfying life and, whether you’re aiming at riches, more responsibility, or positions in better companies, this is a life-long project into which you’ll constantly be investing. In this guide, we’re going to look at how you’ll be able to make steady progress in your career advancement. Using study, placements and independent work, this guide will map out how you can invest in your skills and knowledge throughout your career to extract value from your jobevery month.
School Grades
One thing that we hear time and again is that one’s school grades prevented them from advancing into higher education, and put them off applying for jobs at which they believed they would be out-classes by those who had gone on to college or university. If this sounds like your predicament, there are ways to overcome this.
One of the most obvious – and a great one for both your self-esteem and your career prospects – is to go back and take your examinations from school once more. By achieving better grades, more doors will open to you, including those who lead to higher education and into better job positions. It’s never too late to retake school and college exams and, with good time management, you’ll be able to do this while you work in your current position.
Looking to Self-Education
If you’re working and studying, you’re performing a kind of self-education for which self-employed individuals are particularly well known. This is the case whether you’re working towards retaking your school exams, you’re studying for your RN to MSN nurse conversion course at university, or you’re just looking to onboard new skills – in journalism, freelance graphic design, or software coding – to progress your career.
Self-education has a long and illustrious history within academic circles and has given birth to some of the world’s most impressive minds in the past 200 years. This means that, if you can source the motivation and the resources, you’ll be joining an excellent company in your pursuit of more knowledge and more skills to bring to bear in your next job.
University
There’s no doubt that a university can help advance your career. It’s said that this happens on two parallel tracks: on the one hand, you’re learning from scholars, tutors and mentors for years at a time; and on the other hand, your resume looks a whole lot more impressive when you have a certificate earned through years of hard and rigorous academic work. Heading to university isn’t the be-all nor the end-all for ambitious workers – but it is a path to a better chance of getting those high-level jobs you might be targeting.
Getting into university can be tough. It means getting the right grades at school, a glowing reference, and a good loan so that you can afford the tuition that you’re investing in. It also means working hard – sometimes on a part-time basis alongside your paid work – to get your degree certificate. But at the end of your journey, you’ll have an incredibly valuable piece of paper to show for our efforts.
Key Further Education
Of course, with some jobs, there’s a requirement for you to have gone to university to pick up specific skills. This is the case with the RN (Residential Nurse) course, which you’ll need to go through to work as a nurse in a hospital. Even if you’ve already qualified as a nurse, you may want to advance you further career thanks to the RN to MSN course offered by Spring Arbor University. Gaining you a master’s degree in nursing, which will furnish you with even more skills to bring to bear in your career, the RN to MSN nursing degree advancement is another example of how education can be key in your career.
But the RN to MSN nursing program is just one of the hundreds of opportunities to advance your career as a working individual, using placement to gain skills and earn cash, while also studying towards the kind of value offered by the RN to MSN course and those which are similar to it. Key further education opens doors – and the door to your career as a senior nurse begins with your conversion and development course from RN to MSN.
Night Classes
Another option for those who are happy to take their self-education slowly – or those who are simply unable to invest more time in their education – is to attend night classes. You’ll be able to find any type of night class to suit your needs – including those which take place on multiple evenings per week, or those which you’ll finish after a year of once-a-week tuition.
The benefits of these kinds of courses are multiple and exciting. Not only will you be able to slowly build the experience that you need to advance your career, but you’ll show off, to future employers, just how motivated you’ve been to get better trained, and to upskill yourself into a better career. Pick a language or a key skill, to begin with, and then branch out as you learn more from your educational journey.
Placements and Internships
Education often involves books and revision – the kind of slow slog that you need to undergo to build up your skills and your knowledge before a final set of exams and assessed essays. But there’s another way to learn, and that’s through doing. Nurses know this all too well, which is why the RN to MSN course mentioned above is so well-regarded. Practitioners on the course are aware of how important on-job training is for nurses, and as such, the RN to MSN program sees nurses on the ward as much as looking at books.
This is the case for a wide range of industries. For instance, if you’re looking to branch out into a career in journalism, or into veterinary services, you’re going to need qualifications – and work experience. Often, this experience will come in the form of internships, placements, apprenticeships and brief periods of work experience during which you learn from senior mentors on the job. The importance of this kind of experience cannot be overstated in your pursuit of a better job in the future.
In Your Role
You may be currently working in a role in which you’re not comfortable – and which you feel is failing to meet your expectations in terms of salary or benefits. As such, you’ll be looking to change companies, to retrain, or to find a better role within your current company, to advance your career. This makes sense – but in the interim, you should make sure that you’re working as hard as possible in your role, References are essential to get you into another company, and you want yours to be glowing with praise regarding how hard you worked and how much you applied yourself.
Furthermore, you may be overlooking learning opportunities and career advancement options that you could take advantage of in your current role. For instance, why not ask to shadow a senior member of staff for a week or two to learnhow they conduct themselves and how they achieved their seniority in the first place. You could also take work from other departments, lightening their load while giving you valuable experience in different departments of a business, which may be of use in the future.
Digital Skills
One of the most important sets of skills to use in the modern world revolves around the digital. If you’re an American who’s unable to work a computer in 2020, you’re going to struggle to find a job that pays above the minimum wage bracket. And, if your computer skills are only basic, you’re likewise going to be frozen out of some of the most important job opportunities that exist in the modern world. You need to address your digital skills – even if you feel that they are decent – because they are often what sets apart good candidates from great ones.
In light of this, you should find ways in which you can boost your digital skills, especially those which pertain to your given field of expertise. If you’re a writer, some knowledge of CMS, WordPress, SEO and mailing list providers is advantageous for job applications. If you’re a businessperson, knowing your way around data analytics platforms and programs will help you set yourself apart. All these skills can be learned via simple, often free online courses.
Learning Online
The internet is a tremendous resource. It’s there for you to take advantage of any time and anywhere – something that previous generations could only have dreamed of. This means that, if the majority of the time you spend on the internet is used in scrolling through social media or playing games, you’re wasting the world’s largest library of skills, knowledge, and contacts.
So, how to change your internet habits and make the most of this vital resource? That’s simple: by setting aside some time each day to treat the internet as it was initially designed: to find key knowledge, and to onboard it into your own life and your own career. You’ll find opportunities to learn in the following places:
- YouTube, where a series of high-quality tutorials will cover any of your educational needs.
- MOOCs, or Massive Open Online Courses, open to all around the world
- Journal articles, which present you with peer-reviewed research into your given field
- Online university courses, which you can study as you work full-time
- Specialist blogs, run by industry experts, to give some top tips on how to advance your career
- LinkedIn, which is home to some of the world’s best businesspeople and practitioners
In all of these places, you’re able to source the information you need to educate yourself in advancement in your career. Whether you’re concentrating on a specific skill, or you’re looking to broaden your base of knowledge and advance your learning through a course like the Rn to MSN nursing conversion, the internet is a key resource to help you get there.
Institutional Assistance
Across the US and the world, there are hundreds of institutions focused on the advancement of knowledge, skills and experience for all. Many of these organizations focus on minorities and those who could use a leg up to help them in their career – especially people who experience discrimination when they apply for jobs. But they’re equally open to all, including those who might simply need the funding or the help to get into their first job.
Scholarships are an excellent example of the kind of institutional assistance laid out for those who might need funding assistance in their career and their education. This might extend to courses like the RN to MSN course mentioned above, or for specific industry skills, which your employer might help you to pay for. Always keep an eye not here fantastic opportunities as a chance to advance your career.
Offering to Work for Free
This is something that millions in the US are loath to do – after all, why should you sacrifice your time and your energy in a position that does not pay, or which pays poorly? The answer is simple: for access and experience. These free placements are only offered because companies now that the brightest and best will be looking for them to gain that base level of experience necessary to get a foothold in the industry they’re working to enter.
Finding free opportunities can be a drag – leading you down dark corners of the internet that turn up no findings. So, a simpler way to get your foot in the door, and to get a little more experience on your resume, is to contact companies directly. Those in your local area are likely to take you up on the offer of free work – a placement or internship which is contractually unpaid – to help them get more work done – and to help you to learn on the job.
Two of the key elements to a vibrant and well-planned career are work experience and education. If you’re able to use the tips above to supplement your career, you’ll be able to apply for better, more senior job roles in the future.
