Every job requires learning and growth. Also skills and competencies are not written on stone. Over time they develop or vanish. There is no stable situation in mastery. Question is how to develop your professional skills?

• Dedicate time to develop your professional skills, knowledge, and competencies every week.

• You do not necessary need your job to develop your skills; internet, hobbies, libraries and voluntary work offer many opportunities to develop yourself in areas that recruiters value

• What is “Development target”? It is the activity that produces greatest return on investment of energy, time, and money. Think about your strengths, weaknesses and your job requirements carefully. Focus your energy and develop things that yield greatest results.

• Have max 1-3 focus areas that you develop at a time. Good timeline for personal development is usually 2-3 month project. If you want to tackle bigger challenges like behavioural changes then 5-6 months is required.

• Good rule of thumb is to focus in improving couple of your strengths to excellent level

• You should try to fix your weaknesses only if they block you to achieve your work goals or are obstacles to get a new job or better position.

• Don’t expect that your weaknesses will be shining strengths someday. Focus mostly on your strengths.

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What are your development goals? What is your plan to achieve them? What have you done this week to advance them? These are favourite questions of many experienced recruiters at the final stages of recruitment process. Make sure you are ready to give meaningful answers to these. Everyone is capable to say, “If I get this job, I will learn…”

“Advance three things thousand meters, not thousand things three meters.” - Alan Weiss

You can develop your professional skills in Mazhr!

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Author:
Antero Ojanaho
Senior Consultant at Mazhr

antero.ojanaho@mazhr.com

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