How To Increase Your Promotion Prospects
As someone who has or is working towards a professional qualification, I am guessing that you are pretty ambitious and want to get on in your career.
The truth is anyone who gets professionally qualified is smart. Yet the reality is that not all of those smart people get the career results that they want.
They get a lot of praise and what they do is appreciated by others that they work with and even the customers or clients that they serve.
On the other hand when opportunities to get promoted come around they seem to be overlooked or don’t quite do enough to secure the opportunity.
Sound familiar? The reality is that is not always the smartest or brightest who achieve success in their career.
So what can you do to increase your promotion prospects?
It might seem blindingly obvious but make a point of paying attention to people who are achieving what you want. Notice how they approach their career, how they interact with others, how the approach challenges and position themselves for the next move.
Be proactive and get some objective and specific feedback on what you need to focus on improving if you are to get promoted. Make sure that the feedback that you get is specific enough to do something with it. You can influence the quality of the feedback by the quality of questions you ask when seeking feedback.
For example, which of the following two questions is likely to get you more specific feedback?
- What do I need to improve?
- Tell me in detail the top 3 areas I need to develop to get a role at the next level
The second question is more likely to provide much better insight. You are asking for detail. You are restricting what you ask to the top 3 areas.
If you go out and get feedback from several people, you will start to see patterns emerging and this will give you clear focus on your development.
Make sure that you are actually using the feedback that you receive. If people have highlighted areas where you need to develop, think about the best way to meet that development need.
Sometimes I hear people say things like their employers don’t offer support for training and development. My view is you have to see this as an investment and if that means you have to make that investment personally then do it. It could easily be the quickest and most lucrative return on investment you can make.
Be someone who looks for ways of improving things and offers up ideas. Too often people just ignore areas that are not working well and are easy to fix.
Have a rounded development programme. There are so many people out there who see continuing professional development as merely meeting some professional development hour requirement. What they tend to do is focus on areas that are easy but never grow them personally or professionally (think the serial Excel course delegate).
If you’re struggling to get interviews, chances are your CV is not doing the job it needs to. It could be having someone help you to create a CV that showcases what you have to offer could make a difference.
Maybe you are the person who gets the interviews but doesn’t get the job. Some interview coaching or practice is something that would greatly improve your performance.
The truth is that there are many things that you can do to increase your promotion prospects and start achieve the results you want in your career.
Duncan Brodie helps accountants achieve more career success. He invites you to sign up for his free report The 7 Biggest Barriers To A Successful Career In Accountancy.
About the Author Duncan Brodie
Since 2006 I’ve worked with in excess of 8,000 accountants and professionals in workshops, seminars and one to one helping them land their next jobs and become better leaders, presenters and business partners. Before that I spent 25 years in accountancy climbing the career ladder from Payments Clerk to FD. I’m a CIMA Fellow, Certified Professional Coach and Team Coach Facilitator.