Today’s job market is competitive more than ever. If you are not growing and learning, the job market would ‘swallow’ you. As you make your career your priority, note that time is scarce. So it is critical to find ways to learn and grow so that you can continue to advance your career and develop your skills.
Here are three ways to develop your skills at work and advance your career:
1. Get a mentor and be a mentor
A mentor serves as a guide to the destination you have not travelled yet. A good mentor will help you solve some of the challenges and roadblocks you face at work. Good mentors will be the people who tell you what you need to hear and not what you want to hear. They will give you the real feedback you need to fill in your blind spots that put you in a position to advance.
2. Read and look for problems to solve
Study everything about your company and its competitors. Know the company goals and unique selling points of your company. Be a problem solver, and think about some solutions to the company’s chief challenges. When there are not many special projects to make a grab for, you can develop and pitch your own special project by knowing what challenges you can solve for the company. By doing so, you learn new skills and stand out because you have taken the time to solve a company problem.
3. Make friends within your industry
Many times, new skills are outside your department or area of influence and responsibility. To overcome this, think about networking internally and externally. Stay curious and learn everything you can about their job and their skills. Find out how they got those skills and see how you might be able to chip in over there in your spare time to develop those skills you want to use to grow your career.