If you’ve been at your business for a while, and have been passed on for promotions before, it can get tiring to get motivated. However, there are small changes you can make to put yourself in the best position to be considered.
Whether it’s changing your work ethic, or focusing your attention onto areas you can improve, there’s always something to work on.
Manage Your Time More Effectively
Within business, time management is crucial. Whether it comes down to planning long term or short term, it’s the foundation of a good employee. This means that many employers are looking for promotional candidates who can demonstrate this skill.
If you’re someone who’s never been good at time keeping, consider starting off simple, with a breakdown of daily tasks and how long it should take. This will help break down your day, with more complicated tasks, you can go deeper inside them and make them into smaller steps to make progress.
If something is more urgent, prioritize it over other daily tasks, so you can ensure you make all deadlines. It’s a challenge to get your work balance right, but management will notice and it will pay off when it comes to an interview process, as you’ll have lots to talk about.
Position Yourself as The Main Candidate
When managers and employers are looking for candidates for promotion, they usually have a specific job profile. Make sure you fit somewhere into this category and do research where you can within the organization.
Speak to colleagues who have been promoted here before, even managers would be happy to tell you about their journey, as It shows how passionate you are. Likewise, management will most likely seek feedback about your work from colleagues, both senior and otherwise, so getting along with your team and working with them will go a long way.
If you’re unsure how well perceived you are by your team, then speak to someone you trust, such as a manager or colleague to find out how you can improve your teamwork and skills. This will also show a willingness to change and be ambitious.
Do Outside Work To Improve Yourself
If there are indeed more candidates for a promotion you’re seeking, consider seeking further qualifications via educational means. This will not only help demonstrate to management that you’re serious about wanting the position, but it will also give you extra skills to feel confident for the new job.
If there isn’t time to do the course before the job position opens up, then assure management that you will start doing it if promoted. This will be a great incentive for not only them hiring you, but for you to put in the work.
Most people within the workforce will benefit from courses tailored towards business and finance. Consider studying a managerial finance course, it offers you the tools to understand corporate finance, financial statements and reports. Not only do you learn these core skills, but you’ll learn how to apply them to your specific business through forecasting methods and other financial techniques.
This will heavily demonstrate to your employer that you’re ready to work hard and earn that promotion.
Demonstrate Leadership Skills
If you plan to move to higher positions, you’ll have to be able to not only demonstrate your leadership skills, but improve them. An effective leader is essential to any organization, as they can help build strong teams and work on connections, ensuring projects and other work initiatives perform successfully.
Strong leaders will have top communication skills, and you can become one by honing leadership abilities. Try engaging with co-workers and other employees more often to create a positive working atmosphere. If there are leaders around you, consider shadowing them and learning from them.
Empathy is an important leadership trait, as it helps leaders to understand how the team is feeling about all things work related. Not only does this allow you to find out how to improve the workspace, but you’ll also be able to learn off of the team, listening to new ideas that could innovate the business.
Essentially, leaders are decisive and should be equipped to make decisions quickly, utilizing all the information they’ve gathered to make the right decision. Most of the time, this skill will come from tried and tested time and experience.
Offer Solutions
Another way to demonstrate how serious you are about a promotion, is to prove yourself to be a problem solver. Not only that, but be effective at identifying problems to begin with. No business is perfect, every department will have inefficiencies that they can improve upon.
If you’re the one that’s managed to find that out, then you can distinguish yourself from your colleagues and show leadership potential by taking the initiative to solve the problem. One way you can do this, is to create a plan. This plan could even be taken to an interview or a manager to show what you can do.
Overall, gaining a promotion at work can be a challenge, but by following these tips you should be able to improve your chances.
