Five Tips for Making Progress in Your Career While Staying Put
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Most professionals think they have to change jobs every three years to get ahead. But you really don’t have to move to a new job or company to advance your career. Chances are, your current job offers challenges and opportunities you haven’t yet tapped. By taking on new assignments in your current position, you can expand your skill set and develop your leadership capabilitiesâ€â€and thus your marketabilityâ€â€without spending all that time and effort job-hunting.
The key to making progress in the workplace and in one’s career is to identify and take on developmental assignments. These are roles and activities that provide opportunities to learn new skills, expand your knowledge base, try new behaviors and improve on weaknesses. Because they usually involve an element of challenge or risk, they stretch you out of your comfort zone. A developmental assignment might lead you to work that is broader in scope than what you are used to, such as a project involving more people or coordinating with groups across the organization.
Developmental assignments can also come from the experience of starting something new, such as a new project or a new product line or championing a change, such as adopting a new technology or restructuring the workflow in your business unit. Taking on a "high stakes" roleâ€â€one with a tight deadline, pressure from superiors, high visibility and responsibility for critical decisions, such as managing a big technology upgradeâ€â€will also take you out of your comfort zone and drive significant learning.
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Perhaps...
This really depends on the environment and what they offer. It becomes difficult when management is the only step "up" and you are the lead technical. It is usually unlikely that a lead technical person possesses the management/business skill sets or understand the business requirements.
If your business is not a "Tech" business it is usually unlikely to see rewards from technical initiatives and achievements. When it comes down to career progress, it is usually defined by the ability you possess to make/save the business money; dollars are always the underlying achievement, although sometimes it is who are your friends! ;).
So real technical achievements come down the fifteen-minute presentation to the upper-management explaining how you have or will save them money and do fulfill your role...and hopefully you are the one presenting it..that's the real visibility and/or accomplishment.
Just my 2cents,
ml.
What about Security Engineers...
So real technical achievements come down the fifteen-minute presentation to the upper-management explaining how you have or will save them money and do fulfill your role.
I totally agree with you, however its difficult to explain your achievements and technical initiatives in Security domain.
If you are proactive ( ie stop attack before it happens ) then your boss feel that you are just creating FUD and if you are reactive ( ie stop attack after it happens ) then your boss will say you ain't doing your job.( assuming your boss is manager and not a technical lead ).
The problem in our field is that, security engineers only come into limelight when something f**ks up. But luckily our field is so fast paced that we hardly get any time to sit on our bum.
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