Career Advancement Steps for Millennials

As a young professional, I am all too familiar with the struggle to gain some footing in one’s career.

The typical post-college trajectory goes a little something like this:

1. graduate
2. compete for 10 jobs with 1200 other recent graduates
3. reconsider your career choice
4. apply to 100 more jobs
5. land an entry level, paper pushing job (hopefully)
6. wonder what you’re going to do next.

While millennials are taught that instant gratification is greater than waiting,  before getting the career advancement itch, you need to sit back on your heels and look at what you’ve done so far.

Are you ready to advance? Have you paid your proverbial coffee-fetching dues? Or are you chomping at the bit prematurely, whining about being an assistant and feeling that you should be paid at the same level as your colleagues who have been in their positions for 12 years (I’ve been there)?

If you are in the latter group, calm yourself and work hard in your current role before expecting to move on up. However, that’s not to say you shouldn’t show your stripes before your dues are completely paid.

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Start Early

Start showing interest in advancing your career when you first start your career. You don’t want it to look as though one day you woke up and decided “holy crap, I need to make more money”, and started scrambling to advance.

Start taking small career advancement steps within six months of the launch of your career.

Find a Mentor

Mentors are so valuable.

Mentors can help guide you along the right path, come to your own conclusions, and motivate you to move forward.

Better than having just any old mentor is a mentor within the company for which you want to work, or do work, and want to move up.

Of course, if this is the case, you need to present yourself to your mentor professionally and intelligently at all times. No mentor wants to mentor you into a role in their company if you act like a child when you meet with them.

Be Eager

In conversation with a younger co-worker, I encouraged her to approach the manager when a job opportunity came up.

She told me she didn’t want to, as it would seem too “eager”.

By all means, BE eager! Since when was eagerness a bad thing when it came to your career?

If you weren’t eager to advance and find new opportunities, that would be a bad thing.

I’d be more likely to want to hire somebody who is eager, than somebody who seems like they don’t care (or that they don’t want to seem eager, even though they are).

Be Bold: Step Up to the Plate and Make the Approach

I wouldn’t have my current job if I didn’t march into my manager’s office one day, sit down, and tell her that I wanted it.

I think my boldness was not only refreshing to her, but also took her aback (I can seem like a bit of a pushover until you get to know me), and made her dig into what I wanted my career to look like.

I had a friend who was moaning about how, despite her impressive resume and good attitude, she was never offered promotions.

When I asked her if she’d approached her boss and told him that is what she wanted, she looked at me like I was crazy.

Then she said that she would never do that, because her co-workers are probably always bugging him with what they want in their careers, and she doesn’t want to be a pain.

I encouraged her to ask her co-workers if they had done this, and she reported that none of them had.

How is your boss supposed to know what you want for your career, if you don’t make it clear to them? They are not telepathic, nor are they going to approach you and ask you, so just DO it. Don’t hinder your own success in that way.

Don’t Pigeonhole Yourself

While having a speciality is a positive thing (it makes you less disposable), pigeonholing yourself can be very damaging.

You can pigeonhole yourself in various ways: staying in the same company or industry for too long, having a very specialized profession, burning bridges.

Early in your career, when you have limited experience in your field, try to be more broad and generalized in the experience that you’re gaining, so that doors are left open for you when and if you want to make a move.