One Step to Get Ahead in Your Career

If you want to get ahead in your career the first thing you really need to do is to understand where you are at now in your career. Without fully and objectively comprehending where you are, you won’t have a solid foundation for planning your career and achieving that all important next step.

Ok — so what should you do to get this sort of clarity?

Well … assuming you are already employed it is going to be really important to understand your current role. Typically a well run company will have a job description for all their employees — so you need to take a look at yours. Ok — you may think that this is an obvious step but in fact it quite common that job descriptions are not always fully formulated or shared. And even if you do have the job description for your current role, when was the last time you really looked at it? Really took the time to study it and understand it?

So as a first step take a good hard look at the job description — read it thoroughly. What do you notice?

For example, does it fully and correctly describe what you do now? Or are there major gaps because you are doing other things? Perhaps you are doing something completely different. Perhaps you are doing some of what it says but not all of it.

Take your answers to these questions and use them to make a new version just for yourself incorporating anything that was missing.

Ok — now you have a document that describes what you really do. You can use this to give yourself an appraisal. So ask yourself to what degree are you successfully carrying out the job in line with the job description? Really dig in here and be really honest with yourself. Give yourself a mark out of 5 for the key components - 1 is "not at all", 2 is "sometimes", 3 is "always", 4 "over achieving" and 5 is "excelling".

You ultimately want be doing your job really well with no major gaps - all 3s or better. So be honest — what gaps do you see? Ask yourself what you could do to improve your scores. Where you are doing a good job — ask yourself what you could do to be better?

By completing this step you should have an accurate job description and you should have a honest evaluation of how you are carrying out your role.

Pause there and reflect now on what you have just achieved. You have a clear description of your current job.  If you have been fair to yourself but also honest, you have a balanced appraisal of how well you are doing.

You want to move forward in your career. So now what?

If you have a supportive line manager, who genuinely wants to see you grow, you can take your revised job description and your self appraisal to them. If they are supportive they will appreciate your initiative and want to help you close any gaps. They will also have their own views and working together you can create a complete picture of how well you are doing and a plan for improvement.

Your manager will also remember that you are someone that takes their responsibilities seriously and is keen to progress and improve. If you are fulfilling your role, then they will automatically start to think about what else you could do and how they can retain you. They may think about promotion or other interesting projects that you could get involved in. They will know that you are aware of your value as well.

Without any doubt, that is a good thing for you and your career.

So now you know what your job is in all it’s glorious detail, you have an appraisal, you know where you want to improve and your line manager respects you even more.

Not bad for a couple of hours of reflection and self evaluation.