How to Scale Your Career
We spend many years working on upward promotions and rarely consider what happens when we reach the top of the promotion ladder. Often you find out that the next step is unmapped and uncertain. Effectively, you are all dressed up with nowhere to go. Hence the need to scale your career.
There is a paucity of opportunities at senior levels consequently, senior managers jostle for chances when high-ranking roles become vacant.
If you find yourself in this situation and want the bigger career and seniority that comes with it, you must prepare. The next step is neither clear nor certain and you must recognise early on that your technical skills as excellent as they are, got you here and are only a base for getting you further!
How do you scale your career to enjoy the considerations of headhunters and hiring managers? Here are a few ideas.
1) Step Away from the Traditional – The roles and people needed to run businesses have changed due to business evolution. New roles that did not exist even 15 years ago make it imperative not to think traditionally about your growth. Stay informed and tactical when considering your future.
2) How do we Make Money? – Ensure that whatever role you take, you stay front and central to the financial outcomes of the business. Find roles that involve revenue generation and the business’s financial future. You cannot drive any business at a senior level without understanding how it makes money and what it spends.
4) Learn, Train, Practice – As mentioned before, your prior skills allowed you to the door. What skills are necessary to run modern organisations? Are they leadership, financial analysis, digital mastery, interpersonal skills, etc.? So, what do you need to learn?
5) A Network – Start to build a strategic network using your relationship-building skills. This strategic network is where you meet people with whom you can add and take value. These are also the networks that tell you about upcoming roles, ones that inform you of changes, introduce you to others, and so forth.
Finally, as you work towards landing the big one, learn how to listen, project authority, and demonstrate purpose so you can persuade people, spot power players, and navigate politics at the ceiling level.
Keep your eyes on the prize.
This article is not personal advice. The information contained in this article has been designed for educational and informational purposes only and not for your specific circumstance. It is provided solely to enable you to make your own choices. No material in this article is a substitute for professional advice.
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