Professional success is relative to the person perceiving it. It can be many things. A raise or promotion at work, completing a difficult task, and receiving a positive performance review are all examples of what some people might describe as professional success. Your definition might depend on the industry you work in, the title you hold, the salary you earn, and other personal factors.
While success looks different for everybody, there are some elements that remain the same. Success is a positive thing; it involves achievement, reward, and a favorable result of hard work and dedication. How do you achieve this? There are certain elements for professional success, and we’re going to discover these together.
Relevant Education and Training
The skills you acquire play a big role in the level of excellence you achieve in a career. It doesn’t always have to be book learning or a college degree. The experience you earn and the training you receive on-site are just as important. For example, in the trades industry, whether you’re a plumber, mechanic, or electrician – some of the best skills you’ll learn will be on the job as an apprentice. For those in tech industries, programming and coding learned through extracurricular activities, courses, and hands on experience are critical.
Whatever you want to achieve in your career be prepared to train for it. A combination of hands-on and literary learning is a great way to get started. Don’t be afraid to continue learning even as you get older. To progress in your field, updates and upgrades are essential.
Create Learning Opportunities from Negative Experiences
Nobody’s work life is perfect all day every day. There are going to be ups and downs. It’s how you react to those experiences that define your professional future. For example, if you work as an IT specialist and the system that you’re monitoring crashes under your care, learn from it. Rather than getting frustrated by the situation, or feeling negative about your efforts, uncover the reason behind the crash and educate yourself on how to minimize this risk in the future.
Creating learning opportunities from negative experience takes power away from the problem and turns it into something good.
Commit to Your Cause: Give it 100%
A piece of advice seen regularly in self-help books and career advice columns is not to spread yourself too thin. If you have a goal, working toward it 100% will achieve the best and fastest results. Committing to your goal will increase the chances of success. Think about it this way: if you want to earn a college degree in an undergraduate program and you take a full course load, you should finish within the allotted 3-4-year period. However, if you work part-time to earn your degree, it could take 5 or more years to earn the same degree.
Building Relationships: Be a Team Player
The relationships you build, whether as peers or as a leader, are important. Even those of us who strive to “make it on our own” will work with others at some point in our careers. If you think about your company as a machine and each employee a working cog, you will see why working together is crucial. If one cog stops turning, the entire machine will fail. This is true of any industry.
When building professional relationships, it helps to be positive, respectful, and flexible. Remember, you’ll make it to the top faster if someone helps you build the ladder.
Have a Plan with a Clear Goal
Before achieving success, you should know what success looks like for you. Having a clear target allows you to build a plan and tackle your goal one step at a time. For example, if your company is doing wonderful in every area but marketing, perhaps your current goal is to achieve advertising success. This gives you a specific outcome, from which you can create an organized strategy. Similarly, if your goal is to become an IT professional, you can trace the steps to reach your dream through education, resume building, work experience, and more.
Start Early Finish Strong
It’s never too late to achieve a professional dream, and it helps to start as early as possible. Once you know what you want to do, don’t wait to act. Even if you can’t tackle your main objective straight away, there are ways to improve your chances of success. For example, if your child wants to be a software developer, but must finish middle school, high school and college before meeting this goal, there are ways to develop relevant job skills early. Programs like the ones we offer at iCodeSchool supply children with early science, technology, engineering, art, and math skills, which help them excel in future tech careers.
If you’re interested in learning more about learning skills for success in science and technology fields, visit us online at www.iCodeSchool.com