Top 10 Ways to Kick-Start Your Career In South Africa
Building a career isn’t easy, especially for graduates. It’s particularly difficult if you find yourself competing against people with better qualifications than you. What do you need to do to find the kind of enjoyment or progress you want in your career? Here are ten ways to get you started into a successful career….
1. Stay committed
The first step to accelerating your career is to set and commit to a career goal. The ‘commit’ word is probably the most important word in the last sentence. It is easy to set a goal, but it takes real guts and courage to properly commit to it.
2. Find a mentor
Your mentor can be your secret weapon to help you get your career firing on all four cylinders again. However, if you don’t spend time with them or build a relationship with them, your car’s engine is going to struggle to get started.
3. Make a clear choice
Achieving any career goal, is about making a choice about what you want. To kick-start your career you need to make a choice that you WILL do this. Far too often we let our work life and career be dictated by others around us.
4. Be dedicated to your career
Dedication is giving 100% of yourself while you’re at work, to work; it’s being productive. Dedication is also doing the best job you possibly can, the first time around. The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and the determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand.
5. Build your networks
Your network is often the reason why your career may stall. It is either because you don’t have a strong enough network of introducers OR enough advocates for you within your firm. When it comes to the partnership vote, individual partners will literally vote for you or against you. If you don’t have enough partners rooting for you, this vote may go against you.
6. Recognize What You Can and Cannot Control
Write down the things that stress you out at work. Circle the ones you have control over, and cross out the ones you don’t. Vow to stop spending energy on the crossed-out items; redirect your energy on finding solutions to the problems you can change.
7. See the bigger picture
What is the big picture — your overall vision — for your professional life? Now what are the small daily steps or little pictures that will get you there? Make a small goal, like joining a professional organization or finding a mentor — something you can accomplish today.
8. Make sure you are in the right path
Are you really doing what you want to do? Does what you think you should be doing interfere with what you want to be doing? None of the above suggestions will work if your career isn’t aligned with your true interests, personality traits and natural abilities. If a career assessment is in order, make this your first priority.
9. Build a brilliant online portfolio
If you want to work in any industry that depends on impressions, personality and communication, you need to be effective at promoting your achievements. An old-school printed portfolio is useful, but only for face-to-face interviews.
10. Cultivate Friendships at Work
Your coworkers can understand and appreciate what life is like in your office better than anyone else. Take the time to develop friendly relationships with them. You’ll benefit personally and professionally from the time you invest in getting to know them.
