Jump start your professional development in three easy steps

Your career is a constant journey towards success. In this journey, you will need to keep improving yourself regularly. If you have not assessed your professional development for a while, now is the perfect time to do it. A long, hard look at your professional development journey will reveal many things.

Professional development goals are unique to each person. That’s why another person’s professional development goals will never be the right fit for you. You need to come up with your professional development goals on your own. To do that, you must know exactly where you want to go in life.

Identify what you want

You can never make a career plan without having a clear idea of what you want to achieve. The first step in your journey toward professional development should be to figure out where you want to go in your career. Once you know what you need to achieve, it is easy to make a game plan of steps you can take to reach there. Here are some things you can do once you figure out your goals:

• Keep in touch with your industry by reading up on industry trends
• Identify the factors that can affect the trajectory of your industry
• Determine the skills that are the most demanded by employers in your industry
• Make a list of skills you feel that you need to polish to get to where you want in your career

Determine how you can develop those skills

If you want to climb to new heights in your career, you will need to upskill yourself. Updating your skillset regularly is important, especially when you are working for an industry that is constantly evolving, such as healthcare, technology, or finance. Once you have identified the skills which will give you a competitive advantage, you should take steps to develop or sharpen those skills. Here are a few things you can do:

• Take up projects outside of your scope at work. This will help you learn new skills hands-on
• Consider making lateral moves to different types of jobs to develop new skills and hone your ability to adapt
• Enroll in courses that can help you learn and develop new skills that will become assets for your professional development journey
• Nurture soft skills by moving with colleagues and project teams
• Participate in training and development programs launched by your employer

Address the obstacles

Everyone faces some kind of a barrier in their path to professional development. There are some common obstacles many professionals encounter on their professional development journeys. Let’s take a look at how to overcome two of those:

• Lack of time – You don’t need to start with a bang and dedicate two whole hours of your day to take up an online course right as soon as you start. Start with smaller goals. Set aside 30 minutes each day to watch a video tutorial or read a journal article on a related topic.
• Maintaining momentum – Although a large number of professionals set new year’s resolutions to spend more time on their professional development, only a handful of them follow through. It isn’t easy to stay committed to your goals every day. However, improving yourself by 1% a day is still better than doing nothing.