If you would like to submit an article to Jobseekers Advice, then please feel free to contact us. We are always looking for a wide range of articles dealing with career advice, CV advice, interview advice, working abroad, employment issues, education and training and other recruitment or careers related topics. The articles can be the result of professional experience or personal insight - we are looking to offer all points of view.

Article

Developing your skills and your career by Scott Boyd

Whether or not you are working in your ideal job or are still trying to achieve that goal, it is important to continue developing your skills.

In terms of reaching your ideal career goal, it is important to build your skills, because after all you haven’t got your ideal job due to the fact that you are lacking certain skills or experience.

If you are already working in your ideal job, then it is important for you to keep up to date with the skills required for that role. In this fast paced world you need to be ahead of your game in order to achieve the success that you seek.

This article will look at ways in which you can keep your skills up to date and develop them further no matter what job role you are in.

Industry News

It is important for you to keep up to date with developments in your industry. Mainly because you will be basing your decisions on this information (this is especially important in the business world).

Even if you are still striving towards your ideal job, keeping up to date can help you progress your career. Showing good industry knowledge can be that vital extra point that helps you progress upwards through your organisation, or find success at an interview.

You can keep up to date by monitoring new developments in the news headlines or by subscribing to an industry journal.

There are lots of websites out there that provide up to date information about industry news, developments and other factors that will impress your interviewer or boss.

Develop your skills

I achieved my ideal job by continually improving my IT skills when working in temp assignments.

For me, this mainly focussed on developing my skills on MS Access, MS Word, MS Excel, graphic design packages and web design. The main thing to remember when developing IT skills is that the hardest thing about them is initially understanding them.

The best idea is to work at it, bit by bit and not worry about being an expert straight away. If you starting using software packages it is best just to mess around with them for a bit to begin with – this way you will get a better feel for them.

You can worry about the advanced features later on.

Some people find a introductory training course is useful and it can be. My theory in the matter is that you are better learning the basics by yourself and attending an intermediate or advanced course in order to hone your skills. It is much better to have an expert explain the hard bits to you, than the easy bits.

In terms of soft skills, you need to be developing these at every opportunity. At no stage in your career will these be perfect. There is always room for improvement.

These include:

Communication skills (one to one, phone skills, presentation skills, etc)
Teamwork skills
Leadership skills
Project management skills
Interview skills
Time management

Being proficient in these areas will never cease to be of benefit to you. Take every opportunity you can to develop them.

Develop your skills at work

In you are still climbing the proverbial career ladder, then you can develop your existing skills at work, as well as learning new ones. It is irrelevant whether or not these skills are of benefit to your final career goal.

Having a broad range of skills will stand testament your flexibility and adaptability and ultimately benefit you in your job search.

The best way to develop your skills at work is to find more work to do. Unfortunately!

Offering to work in other areas, or suggestion new tasks to perform will enable you to put dormant skills to use, or to develop new ones.

For example, I worked as a temp admin assistant for a charity.

After a few discussions with the IT manager (which involved me explaining that I wanted to pursue a career in web design, and giving him an idea of my IT skills) I was given more interesting work to do.

This include installing software on PCs, adding hardware, setting up databases and swiftly moved on to graphic design and eventually web design. In fact, the job was my first experience with MS FrontPage (the web design software I use) and Internet Marketing, which is directly responsible for more advanced jobs I secured and this website.

Had it not been for that one temp job where I seized an opportunity to develop my skills, then it is entirely possible that I wouldn’t be a professional webmaster right now and this site wouldn’t be here. No doubt to the delight of a few companies out there! You know who you are!

The main thing to remember

Seize the day!

Take every opportunity you can to further your skills, after all the worst that can happen is that you are told “no”.

The best that could happen is that you very quickly progress to your ideal job (or, if you are already there, become an expert in your field).

It’s your choice.

Regards

Scott Boyd - Webmaster and Founder - Jobseekers Advice

Home ▫ Forum ▫ Register ▫ CV Advice ▫ Interview Advice ▫ Career Advice ▫ Job Seeker ▫ Career Education

Jobseekers Advice is dedicated to providing the best free career advice and information for CV advice, career advice, interview advice, employment issues, job seeker issues, career education and much, more. If you feel there is anything lacking from our free career advice information, feel free to contact us. No content on this site may be used without the express permission of www.jobseekersadvice.com (privacy policy).