Despite your ambition to climb the career ladder, you might feel it is an impossible challenge to grow your skills due to your demanding job. Believe it you don’t need to pick between a job that pays the bills and building your knowledge and experience.
You can adopt tactics that will boost your expertise, education, and experience to achieve your professional goals with a little research. Find out how to juggle career advancement and a demanding job.
Find the Perfect Online Course
While you might desire to earn a university education, you might feel it is a pipe dream due to your busy schedule. However, the right online course can turn your professional goals into a reality, and you can complete it alongside your hectic lifestyle. For example, if you want to grow your business expertise to become a company asset or even start your own venture, you can study for an MBA online.
An Aston University MBA course is 100% online, and you can complete it within two years, which offers six intakes each year. Thanks to its flexibility, you can juggle a university education alongside a demanding job. Plus, the skills developed during the course can support your current role and personal life.
The course can help you make more informed decisions, identify solutions to problems, and pinpoint potential obstacles. As a result, it could help you stand out from your colleagues and climb the corporate ladder. Once the course is over, you may have positioned yourself for a promotion at the company, or you can move onto a brand that values your business knowledge and skills.
Use Your Lunch Breaks Wisely
Are you guilty of skipping a lunch break or waste it playing games, browsing Facebook, or reading celebrity gossip? Then, it is time to use it wisely. Devoting a 30-minute lunch break, five times per week, to professional training could add up to 10 hours of learning each month.
Make the most of your downtime by:
- Watching training videos
- Reading industry articles
- Networking with other professionals
- Analyzing the competition
- Sending resumes to employers
- Reading textbooks
- Completing an online course
In addition, it could help you become a more knowledgeable, skilled, and confident professional.
Maximize Your Daily Commute
Stop staring out the window during a commute and start reading books and industry articles to boost your knowledge. Use a bus, car, or train journey to brush up your skills, change your perspective, and improve weaknesses.
If you don’t drive to work, you can form connections on LinkedIn or Twitter, send emails to prospective employers, or study for a course. If you travel an hour to work and an hour back, that is 10 hours of learning you can add to your busy schedule each week.
Meet with Other Professionals After Work
Yet, try to occasionally make time to meet with other professionals after work for a coffee or drinks. While your knowledge and experience can help you advance in your career, another hardworking professional could open up multiple doors for you in an industry.
Strive to build a large, strong network to increase professional opportunities and enter your dream career at a faster rate. A few hours of networking per month could turn your professional dreams into a rewarding reality.
Don’t Waste Your Weekend
Weekends aren’t designated for downtime. For example, if your partner is meeting with friends or your kids are at their grandparents’ house, use the quiet time to study for a course, read an industry textbook, or work on a specific skill improving your financial knowledge.
Enhance Your Skills During Travel
Do you often head off on various business trips? Maybe you have an upcoming break planned with your family or friends. If so, use the time to focus on learning about an industry, testing your knowledge, or creating a roadmap to professional success.
Flesh out the small steps you will need to take to achieve your dream career during a flight or study for an upcoming test when lounging by the pool or on a beach. If you travel on business, use your evenings to learn about your desired industry or meet with a professional at your destination for a coffee or dinner.
Get to Know Your Colleagues
Even if your current job brings you little joy, try to get to know your colleagues as much as possible. If you don’t like your role, there is a chance they don’t, too, and they might one day move into another industry or position.
For this reason, strike up friendships with colleagues, take an interest in their everyday lives, enjoy after-work drinks, and stay in touch when they leave the business. You never know, a friendly relationship could open a professional door for you, or they might know someone in your desired industry who might have an opportunity to suit your skills.
Building your expertise, education, and experience might not feel easy alongside a busy job, but it is possible. Sacrificing a few hours per day to learning, networking, and education could help you enter a brand-new industry or climb the corporate ladder.
Plus, many online courses are designed to fit working professionals’ lives, and you can open multiple doors by connecting with your colleagues and meeting with others for coffee, dinner, or drinks. So, stop wasting time and dedicate every spare minute you have to your career advancement. Then, you can trust your hard work and effort will pay off in the long term.
