Progressing in your career is a pretty common goal. But a lot of the time, we get comfortable where we are. Think about it — when was the last time you updated your LinkedIn profile or your resume? I updated my LinkedIn profile recently, but my resume is sadly out of date. It doesn’t show any of the consulting, or the real estate investing and property management I’ve done. It didn’t show Extension of You Home Care or the Care Patrol of the Triangle franchise either, both of which I ran at the time. That’s my own fault, and I know it. It’s so easy to let things slide, because we’re comfy where we are. That can be deadly if you’re suddenly faced with a job loss. So here are some lessons I’ve learned, and am passing along to help you stay sharp.
5 tips to stay sharp in your career
- Keep your resume up to date. You should also keep your LinkedIn profile up to date. You do have a LinkedIn profile, don’t you? Get on there, start building your network, and get recommendations from colleagues. The experience will help tremendously.
- Educate yourself. It doesn’t matter whether your career is health, or technology, or something else entirely. There are always opportunities for more education and better skills. When was the last time you took a class? What was the last career-related book you read?
- Set goals. Take the time to set goals. Even small ones — like get a promotion within two years, or acquire a certain skill you’ve had an eye on for a while. You don’t need the perfect five-year plan some people have, but you do need some sort of goals, and to be working towards them.
- Solicit feedback regularly. Ask your manager for feedback regularly. Figure out what you need to improve, and do it.
- Periodically, look for a new job. Go looking every three to five years. You’ll get a feel for what skills the market wants, and you can practise interviewing. Even if you decide to stay put, you’ll keep those skills sharp.
Focusing on more than just your daily to-do list is important. Make time to take stock of the bigger picture and stay focused on where your career is going. If you don’t keep an eye on it, you run the risk of drifting.
The same five, translated for business owners
Owning the business doesn’t exempt you from any of this. It just removes the prompts.
- Nobody updates your resume, and nobody needs to — but you should still be able to say what you have actually done in the last two years. If you can’t, that’s a signal about whether you are building something or just running it.
- No one signs you up for training. The skills that got the business to where it is are rarely the ones it needs next, and nothing will tell you when the switch happened.
- Nobody sets your goals, which means nothing stops you doing the same year several times in a row.
- Nobody gives you feedback. This is the big one. Employees won’t, because you pay them. Clients tell you by leaving. This is what a group of peers is actually for.
- You can’t interview elsewhere — so the equivalent is finding out what comparable businesses charge, pay and produce. Same function: a reality check against the outside world.
Every item on the original list exists because an employer supplies structure. Working for yourself means supplying it yourself, and the people who don’t tend to find out five years later that they stood still while the market moved.
What skills do you think you need to focus on to stay sharp?
