Climbing The Industry Ladder: 4 Tips for a Faster Rise

You can’t be successful in your career by standing still. In order to increase your income, authority, and opportunities, you have to continually get better – ultimately rising the ranks of your industry. The question is, how can you do it quickly and efficiently?

What Do People Look for When Promoting and Hiring?

When it comes to promoting and hiring individuals (within an organization and/or an industry), managers and executives are really looking at five specific factors:

• Reliability. Believe it or not, reliability is one of the most sought-after characteristics in an employee. If a manager or executive knows they can depend on you, they’re much more likely to put you in a position of authority and responsibility – it’s that simple.

• Passion. This is one of those intangibles that you can’t teach. Either you’re passionate about your job/career/industry, or you’re not. Passion is impossible to fake indefinitely. If you love the job, it’ll shine through. If you don’t, you probably want to consider doing something else.

• Mentality. When promoting and hiring, your superiors will look at your mentality. Do you feel like you’ve made it? Or do you have the heart of a student – always looking to learn?

• Approval. You need a network of people around you who believe in and support you. This includes people who will vouch for you and recommend you for specific jobs.

• Skill. Finally, there’s skill. It’s not a coincidence that this is last on the list. Because while skill does matter, skill is teachable (the other four items on this list are not). Acquire the right technical skills along the way, but don’t get so focused on checking these boxes that you forget about the others.

If you can excel in each of these areas, you’ll eventually set yourself up for promotions and growth opportunities. It’s simply a matter of timing.

4 Tips for a Faster Rise to the Top

Anyone can rise the ranks by putting in enough years. But if you want to rise as fast as possible, you need to adopt a more specific approach. Here are several suggestions for a more efficient rise:

1. Create a Personal Brand

According to Personal Branding Blog, building a powerful personal brand will “differentiate you and allow you to compete in the global marketplace.” What was once a luxury is now a necessity.

A personal brand is a culmination of your values, mission, goal, strengths, and skills all wrapped up into an online identity that’s consistent and recognizable. Your personal brand is displayed via your social media profiles, website, online resume, and any content that you create or share.

When you really think about it, your personal brand is your story. It’s what you communicate to others. But you’ll probably need to spice it up a bit to make it cut through the noise.

“Think about what makes your story unique,” entrepreneur Michael Page suggests. “Have you taken an unusual path to get to where you are today? Has your career taken interesting twists or turns? How have your life experiences impacted your professional choices? The more color you can add to your story, the more compelling your personal brand will be.”

If you’re struggling to identify your brand, gather the people who know you best and brainstorm some of the key points.

2. Do What You Say You’re Going to Do

This is very simple, yet important advice. It sounds obvious, but it’s a lost art in today’s world. If you can become the person who always does what he says he’s going to do, you’ll position yourself as the most reliable person in the office. And as you’ll remember, reliability is one of the most highly sought-after characteristics in the business world.

The good news is that it’s not very difficult to do what you say you’re going to do. Often, this just looks like following through on small things. If you say you’re going to show up at 9 a.m., make sure you’re there on time. Never make people question or wait. In the words of one famous shoe company, just do it.

One way to always live up to this is by implementing the old mantra of under-promising and over-delivering. Again, this principle is rooted in setting the proper expectations from the start. For example, if you know that you can safely generate $1,000 in sales for a client within 7 days, you don’t tell them that. Instead, you promise them $800 in sales in 10 business days. This is the “under-promise.” Then when you actually deliver the results, they’re impressed. And if you’re able to exceed your own expectations, you’ll leave them absolutely speechless.

3. Network Like a Crazy Person

It doesn’t matter if you’re working in a dingy IT office or you’re in the business of entertaining clients, networking has to be part of your lifestyle. You should constantly be meeting new people, socializing, and talking about what you do. The goal isn’t to manipulate anyone or constantly make yourself look good. The key is to build up a network of people who know, like, and trust you. This will eventually lead to opportunities within and outside of your industry.

4. Constantly Stack New Skills

It’s not enough to maintain the skills you have. To become a more competitive professional in your space, you need to add new skills. More specifically, you want to stack on complementary skills that work with what you already have. For example, if you’re a skilled writer/author, learning public speaking could open up an entirely new world of lucrative speaking gigs.

Give Yourself a Head Start

There’s no sense in waiting on people to hand you promotions. While they might eventually come, you’re going to wait decades before you see any meaningful progress. If you want to speed up your climb and rise the ranks early in your career, you need to implement a plan.

Hopefully, this article has given you some ideas that you can use to shape that strategy moving forward!