Tips for Career Progression

Tips for Career Progression

Navigating your career journey will hopefully include a series of experiences that challenge your skills and abilities in ways that are satisfying and rewarding. Only you can manage your career. That means you must determine what things you are passionate about, what your goals are, both professionally and personally, and how much energy you are willing to invest along the way. Learn how to build an effective career path framework for yourself.

This article will guide you through a process that will assist you in learning more about yourself and your career. You will think about your personal work history, your unique talents and passions, and consider a path that corresponds with your opportunities for growth and advancements.

 The Bar is rising

Why it takes time for a professional to move from lower to higher roles. What is it that is changing as you are growing in the ladder? As you start maturing into senior leadership roles you improve on your technical skills both in depth and breath. Given below are some of the expectations that change as you move up the ladder:

  • You start adding more value and bring more expertise on table.
  • You gain more competencies that drive you towards acquiring leadership and management traits.
  • Your responsibilities continue to grow and your leaders expect more and more from you.
  • You start managing others and need to learn people management skills
  • As you grow higher you job satisfaction levels increase.
  • Your compensation also continues to grow and you will be surprised that it does not really matter the way it used to be.
  • You are expected to take decisions and bear the responsibility of their success and failure. You are expected to evaluate risks and opportunities.
  • You become strategic at the top of the pyramid and now people look at you for their answers.
  • You need to provide thought leadership and set directions, goals and objectives for your department
  • You need to set the vision and direction for your organization.
  • You motivate and people follow and execute your dreams.

How do you achieve this transition smoothly? How do you ensure you have the necessary skills when you are making career jumps? You can do by doing career planning and having a career progression framework with you.

Developing a Career Path Framework

Ever wondered if your current career path is the right one? There can be a big discrepancy between the career you thought was a good fit for you and the career that is actually right for you. So, how do you tell what you should be doing?

Career development planning and building career-path frameworks can sound boring but at an individual level, you should work to define a career path framework for yourself. The career progression framework will be used to define the possible roles and titles that you want to move into as you build your career and shows possible roles and competencies needed for those roles. Start putting together a framework by answering the following questions:

Who Am I?

  • What do you enjoy most about your work?
  • What would you like to do more or less of in your current job?
  • What are your personal work/life priorities?

Where Am I?

  • What are you known for in your current organization – what is your personal brand?
  • Is the culture and climate of your existing organization a good fit?
Tips for Career Progression

What’s Coming/Changing?

  • What trends in your industry, function or domain will impact your career choices in the future?
  • Are there major changes in your personal life that will impact your career decisions?
  • How do you think changes in technology will affect your role in the next several years?

Where are You Going?

  • What new skills and competencies would you like to develop?
  • What are your long term career aspirations?
  • Where do you see yourself in 2, 5 & 10 years?

What are the Expectations?

  • What kinds of role expectations might there be for the role you are considering?
  • What do you think you need to do to be ready for your next job?
  • Is your current image requires any modification to help you achieve your career goals?

How am I Going to Get There?

  • What kind of experience or job profiles will you need in your resume to achieve your goal?
  • Who else will you network with for feedback and input on your plan, who are your sponsors?

By doing an honest evaluation of your skills, strengths, and weaknesses you will gain clarity on actions you need to take to meet your career aspirations. Most people don’t know what they’re good at. The questionnaire above can help you gain a neutral perspective about your strengths and weaknesses and help you realize your talents.

Tips for Career Progression

Explore Technofunc Toolkit for Technical Leadership

Technofunc resources aim at bridging the gap between technical and functional expertise and have invested a lot of effort into creating tutorials on various business processes and industry knowledge. Our curriculum is designed to equip a person to leverage technology as well as learn critical business application processes along-with system integrity and security, systems audit, project management, and other key methods widely used today that helps in the integration of business processes and practices in tune with the requirements that are driven both by business, globalization and legislature. We help you gain expertise in both technical and functional skills, which when applied collectively comprise of professional competence and excellence.

Given below are the different technofunc resources to start building your technical leadership skills:

“The difference between great people and everyone else is that great people create their lives actively, while everyone else is created by their lives, passively waiting to see where life takes them next. The difference between the two is the difference between living fully and just existing.”

- Michael E. Gerber



Related Links

Creation Date Wednesday, 28 March 2012 Hits 14989

You May Also Like

  • Overview of Stress Management

    Overview of Stress Management

    Stress is a product of the busyness of modern life. It has assumed grave dimensions ever since the emergence of industrialism. In fact, stress is a natural, ongoing, dynamic, and interactive process that takes place as people adjust to their environment. Stress can be brought about by positive or negative life events. Distress can cause disease and eustress or positive stress can promote wellbeing and increased productivity. Learn to recognize and be responsible for your stress, and learn the ways to manage stress.

  • Building Your Domain Knowledge

    Building Your Domain Knowledge

    Domain knowledge from a career management perspective encompasses the understanding of industry dynamics and business processes of the target operational area. Domain expert exhibits clear knowledge in the respective industry and understands the industry concepts in general. It is always recommended to best highlight your exposure of domain in your resume or cover letter. TechnoFunc provides you with the best tutorials to gain domain knowledge in a large number of industries and business areas.

  • What is a Career Path

    What is a Career Path

    In the early years, most jobs were skill-oriented, and with the development in lifestyles and technology, the current jobs are knowledge-oriented jobs such as management, accountants, design, or computing. Career paths encompass varied forms of career progression and this article discusses how we can build a fulfilling career? Learn here about career paths, industries, and opportunities for gaining experience in the field of your choosing.

  • Evaluating Your Career Interests

    Evaluating Your Career Interests

    Want to find out what you are best at when it comes to proactively building your career? What are your real interests? The first step in career planning is reflecting. Reflecting upon your own self, to be more self-aware, and then following your dreams with both your heart and mind. Here is an opportunity to begin exploring yourself. At the end of the process, you will have a far better understanding of your desires than you have currently.

  • Discover Your Career Direction

    Discover Your Career Direction

    The process of finding career direction begins with specific career exploration and identification of a career that could be passionate about, a career that allows you to make the optimum use of your talents. After identification of the career, you need to acquire skills and tools, and education that can help you get entry into your dream career. Learn the important tips that you cannot afford to miss.

  • Is Stress Always Bad?

    Is Stress Always Bad?

    Stress is an essential part of our life. No one can live without stress. Stress can be beneficial as well as harmful. Stress as a positive influence adds excitement and hope while as a negative influence it can result in destructive feelings, anger, and depression. Although the general orientation to stress is to consider unfavorable outcomes, yet one must have observed that stress experiences may also facilitate the development of effective and varied coping behavior, increased personal resources, and lead to a sense of competence in development. Stress at a moderate level is not only inevitable but may be useful for physical and mental well-being.

  • Katz’s Three-Skill Approach

    Katz’s Three-Skill Approach

    Robert Katz identified three leadership skills called - technical skills, human skills, and conceptual skills as the basic personal skills essential for leadership. Leaders must possess these three skills that assist them in optimizing a leader's performance. Technical skills are related to the field, human skills are related to communicating with people and conceptual skills related to setting the vision.

  • Understanding Corporate Strategy

    Understanding Corporate Strategy

    Management outlook and procedures have been revolutionized by more and more innovations over the recent years. It is no longer possible to follow traditional approaches to develop your organization's direction, its management as well its effectiveness. Senior managers need to be good decision-makers. In this section, we introduce concepts for strategy, strategic planning, strategic leadership, their exact meaning and associated terms, and how to use them.

  • Team Development by Building Trust

    Team Development by Building Trust

    As your team begins to work together, you need to establish a way each team member can exchange ideas and build mutual trust. Successful groups are built on trust and collaboration. A free exchange of ideas, in an open environment, will allow your team to get to know each other and enable you to check on how they work together. Learn some tips to help build team trust and establish personal bonds.

  • Tips for Effective Time Management

    Tips for Effective Time Management

    After studying and analyzing how time is spent, why time is wasted, and where time is wasted you need to decide about the changes required for effective utilization of time. For this purpose, a large number of remedial measures can be taken by you. The first and foremost determinant of a planned and purposeful utilization of time is to develop consciousness of the value of time at all levels of the organization. Planning, goal setting, and defining priorities are concerns to addressed immediately.

Explore Our Free Training Articles or
Sign Up to Start With Our eLearning Courses

Subscribe to Our Newsletter


© 2023 TechnoFunc, All Rights Reserved