Hitting A Wall In Your Career?
Here’s How To Break Through
Even though the path seems pretty clear when you’re a child, life gets a little more complicated than school, college and then work. In fact, more often than not, people who are established in a career branch find themselves in a figurative cul-de-sac where they can’t progress any farther. Whether you’ve just been fired or you can’t improve your career chances, it’s time to take a step back and consider the situation. Yes, you’re hitting a brick wall. But it doesn’t mean that it’s the end of your career. You can start focusing your efforts on finding your second chance instead of trying to go through the brick wall by force. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that a shakeup is the worst thing that could happen to you. It isn’t. It’s the perfect occasion to change your perspectives on your work life and reset your journey. In other words, stop hitting the brick wall, and create your second chance instead.
Remove The Blinkers
So you think that you’re an expert in your branch and you can’t wrap your head around the fact that your co-workers won’t recognize it. Don’t smirk; it’s a common issue for a lot of niche professionals who have a very detailed level of knowledge about a tiny area of applications. In other words, they are specialized that they fail to understand the implications of their area of expertise in various industry sectors, or even across multiple business strategies. The problem with uber specialization is that it ultimately functions as a pair of horse blinkers. You can’t see anything else but what’s ahead, and that makes you less efficient at solving new problems and thinking outside the box. Instead, you might want to book some time with a tutor from Tower Of English to improve your basic understanding of essential topics, from marketing to accounting. This will put you in a better position to provide creative solutions to a new range of professional challenges. If tutoring is not for you, you can at least follow influencers on LinkedIn to get to hear about how various areas of the market and the business structure interact. Reading the personal experiences of other experts can be a helpful tool to optimize your grasp of business and make your knowledge more relevant.
Improve Your Professional Skills
Do you know what happens to people who’ve been working for too long in the same company? They lose track of the professional realities of the market and fail to notice that the skill trends are constantly evolving. Say you started to work in marketing 10 years ago. It’s likely that you caught the beginning of the SEO rise. But you’ve probably missed on video content marketing and the rise of analytics. So, it can be useful to learn more about the current trends of your sector and target new skill sets. If you’re looking for a thinking platform to guide you through your research, have a look at the Google Digital Academy. It provides a lot of useful resources about the latest trends and knowledge master classes so that you can easily get back in touch with the current challenges of your sector.
Learn More About Your Market
How long have you been working in the same company and within the same market? There’s a sense of routine that takes over your approach to work and the way you perceive your target audience. While it’s important to develop this routine of activities, it’s also essential to question it regularly, especially when it pushes you to make assumptions about customer behavior. Over the past 12 months, facial recognition has made a breakthrough for smartphone security; emojis have taken over acronyms and gifs in social media communication for teenagers and young adults; several immigration and economic alliances and regulations are under scrutiny. In other words, the technological, political, social, economic and legal situations have evolved, which will consequently reflect in the behavior of your customers. That is exactly why marketing analysis and the study of the market transformations are essential to keep in your work toolbox. You need to keep track of the growth rate of the market and its specific trends. As said before, emojis are a communication trend and expected from B2C companies to remain relevant and profitable to your business.
What If The Wall Is Caused By Hierarchy?
Picture the scene: You’ve been working for a long time for the same company, among the same team, and quite frankly you’re expecting a promotion any time soon, but it never happens. Before you consider your potential flaws that might be the cause of this disappointing situation, you need to know that not all bosses are perfect. In fact, more often than not, a weak hierarchy structure is the reason for your lack of career progression. Bosses are after all busy, and they may not be in a position to focus on your personal development. Or maybe the company has no interest in your progression as you are already highly productive where you are. Additionally, as the trend is to rely on crowd sourced content for knowledge improvement, it’s likely that your company isn’t investing in a program that is designed to promote your personal evolution. That’s something that you need to do for yourself.
Know When To Switch Companies
There are brick walls that are immovable. When improving your skill set and understanding that hierarchic concerns fail to deliver, it’s time to consider a more drastic approach. Quitting your job might be for the best, especially if you’re in a company with no chance of a career move. Joining another company might give you the opportunity for upward mobility and therefore career progression that you didn’t have elsewhere. It doesn’t mean that you’re unhappy in your job, but it means that another employer can give you the chance you miss in your current position. More importantly, you might find that a small company is reluctant to promote you to a leadership role as the hierarchy structure doesn’t leave room for expansion. But moving to another business might be for you the occasion to step into the leader’s shoes and make the most of your knowledge and experiences.
Is It The Right Career For You At All?
Have you thought that maybe the reason you can’t fulfill your career dream is that you’ve been in the wrong career all this time? It’s important to pay attention to the little signs that your mind gives you every day to know when the job doesn’t meet your expectations. Say you get excited about the perks of your work to get you going. At first, it sounds normal. But what if it’s the only thing that brings you happiness at the end of the day? Additionally, this kind of approach is often combined with increased negativity about any new project. If you’ve got a negative attitude about everything that relates to your job, then let’s be honest, it’s not the right job for you.
Not Happy With The Boss?
In the end, if you think that you could do better than your boss or your company, then why not go ahead and prove it? Starting your own business is a bold move, but it can certainly break through that career brick wall. But it’s not something you want to dive into unprepared. You should take the time to develop your idea, create a business plan, and build up your financing options before you’re ready to hand in your resignation letter.
The brick wall in your career progression is a sign that something needs to change. Whether it’s your set of knowledge, your employer, or your career altogether, it’s up to you to find out.
