Four Tips To Help You Kickstart Your Career Successfully

Originally Posted on Entrepreneur ME on December 19, 2019

Four Tips To Help You Kickstart Your Career Successfully

Building a successful career requires tolerance, determination, and patience.

Now that you have achieved your long-awaited academic degrees, you’re finally ready to set sail on a new adventure: your career. And your next direct concern will primarily revolve around how to succeed in that particular career and efficiently climb your way to the top. The reason is that, since our globalized world has become so competitive, being on top of your game, and excelling at what you do is more crucial than ever before to secure your share of success.

When starting out, professionals with big ambitions dream of having a highly successful career that will provide them with the lifestyle they desire, and a sense of glory they will relish every day. To attain this goal, you need to stand out from the crowd, and separate yourself from the average simply by positioning yourself in the right place.

This is something that is largely under your own control, and lies in your unbeatable commitment and keenness to reach your goals in an efficient and effective manner. Once you have the eagerness, and the right mindset “to be in it to win it,” you can start climbing that well-deserved ladder.

Here are four tips that will make you truly incredible to start enjoying career success:

1. Listen and observe, then take initiative

At the beginning of your professional journey, one of your best attributes should consist of your ability to listen, listen, listen, and observe. Careful listening will help you avoid misunderstandings, and give you a big boost in building relationships with others. It will allow you to learn more about your environment, and help you fully grasp the business you’re in.

Furthermore, it will benefit your integration towards understanding the organization’s vision, mission, and goals through a multidirectional communication channel that you’d have created for yourself. Think about it as your winning ticket to get the big picture, develop strong business acumen, and figure out the priorities that will get you ahead. At the same time, listen attentively to feedback, and consider it as an essential constructive tool that will help highlight on your strengths and weaknesses to help you hone your abilities, or simply teach you something new.

Because of competition, companies have nowadays raised the bar when it comes to the skillsets their employees have to offer. They expect individuals who are willing to take initiative by boldly facing challenges that may come across during their day-to-day activities. What they are looking for are determined team members with a go-getter attitude who can bring groundbreaking ideas to the table, launch new projects, and pitch creative solutions to create new business opportunities.

Therefore, what will truly matter to your employer will revolve around how you will be significantly contributing to fulfilling the company's goals and mission, both on the short run, and on the long run.

2. Maintain your learning curve with an absorbent mind

Regardless of the university you may have graduated from, business life remains very different from college. This is where you will start applying theory into practice in a real-world dynamic setting, and get the chance to become an eternal learner. Maintain your learning curve by adopting a mindset of continuous learning and improvement. Seek to improve your know-how based on the market’s latest trends and demands, update your set of skills through research and training, attend conferences or online seminars, and mainly enrich your capabilities through acquired experience.

Therefore, in order to succeed, you need to take ownership of both your achievements, and your failures that will occur throughout your career journey. Bear in mind that the value of failure is far greater than that of success, for it offers room for lucidity, proactive thinking, and experience. That said, mistakes serve as a benchmarking guide for better anticipated results, given that they are fixed and never repeated, will not drag you down, and will not jeopardize the company in any way.

To move forward and take on new challenges, you will need to prepare yourself with utmost motivation by paying attention to details, showing interest by asking questions, and submitting accurate deliverables on time. Achievements, on the other hand, should be celebrated, but also analyzed in order to learn how to replicate them, and build on them in the future.

3. Gain trust

One of the pillars of success is understanding and respecting the company’s chain of command. This is a crucial step if you wish to succeed in building trust and respect with your direct superior, who is responsible for making sure you are productive and happy at work. As you thrive to earn your manager’s trust, you will be perceived more and more as a trustworthy asset in your team, and will be assigned bigger responsibilities that will push you up the ladder. The chain of command reinforces employees to have a closer rapport with their managers, and endorses change through a consolidated system.

Therefore, work hard towards respecting your deadlines, and fulfilling every commitment you make, no matter their level of difficulty. This is a critical tip for success, especially early on in your career, and when building your initial relationship grounds with your manager. Remain focused at work by being physically and mentally present, and blocking out all types of distractions.

Act like a source of solutions, rather than a source of conflict. Competent professionals find ways to prove themselves by becoming the go-to reliable problem-solvers that can come up with creative and resourceful solutions to any business concern.

4. Maintain a positive attitude

It only takes just a few seconds for someone to develop their first impression on you; therefore, make sure you project a great image of yourself by demonstrating high energy, high standards, tolerance, compassion, and professionalism, to say the least. People are more eager to work with passionate, upbeat people. When you have a positive attitude, positive results will happen. Always look on the bright side of things, and maintain a positive mindset as the future of your career will be brighter as well.

Take the time to express gratitude to anyone who contributes to your success either by offering you guidance, coaching you or joining forces with you to help you accomplish a task. It may sound simple to recognize such efforts, but it’s a genuinely significant act. By doing so, this simple gesture will work its magic in keeping those around you motivated in helping you out in the future, and teaming up with you whenever you need a hand. Make sure to also return the favor whenever someone asks for your help. This will also help you develop your leadership skills, as you advance in your profession.

If you ever find yourself demonstrating a pessimistic attitude towards some parts of your career, you should first and foremost act immediately by replacing it with a constructive and optimistic outlook. Pessimism is the enemy of success, and it will only bring you and those around down. This may also be the result of having wrong expectations, therefore make sure to re-evaluate your expectations, and ask for guidance from your manager in order to realign them with realistic ones.

Building a successful career requires tolerance, determination, and patience. By keeping the above-mentioned four career success tips in mind, you will be putting yourself on the right track towards great achievements.

Farah Bousaleh - https://www.entrepreneur.com/author/farah-bousaleh

Certified Professional - Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM)

Farah Bousaleh is a fully-fledged HR generalist with a diversified experience across various aspects of progressive strategic and HR ops management. Besides being a Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM)- Certified Professional (CP), Bousaleh is always seeking new opportunities for knowledge and growth through hard work, educational achievements, and curiosity. 

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