When planning out your career, it is essential to consider your earning potential as salary is a vital part of how fulfilling your job will be. Many people will make comments to the effect of money not being everything, and this can be very true. Still, it would be incredibly naïve to suggest that it’s not an important factor when planning out our career. It may well be that we are not looking amass great wealth, but most will have an idea of what sort of income will make us comfortable.
Choose Your Sector Wisely
It is widely known that what industry you work in can give you a greater or lesser potential for earning. Even if you do the same job, these choices can make a fantastic difference to your pay-packet, for example, the difference between being an accountant for a charity or local government and doing the same job for a successful multinational can be huge. If we look at the job sectors that pay the most, it should come as no surprise that the top ones are mostly in some kind of financial industry.
Grow Your Reputation
You are the biggest asset you have, and it’s often through your reputation that big career moves are made. Think about it, you can apply for as many jobs as you like, but if the employer knows you before-hand, you have a clear advantage, and networking is a necessary evil to achieve this. If you are thinking about networking as a separate task to your daily professional life, then you are doing it incorrectly; it needs to be something that is always happening. Every meeting, formal or informal, should be taken as an opportunity to sell yourself.
Get the Best Degree
Education is essential, it’s no surprise that those with degrees from the best universities in the world almost always go on to have more meaningful careers and therefore end up with higher salaries. You can continually improve on this, and it cannot be underestimated how much going back to study an MBA from a top institution could help your career.
Consider Going Your Own Way
Is working for someone else holding you back? The answer is not a definitive yes under all circumstances. However, it is something that should at least be explored. If you are crucial to your company’s success, then perhaps you could be the vital cog in your own organization? There is a wealth of information and resources available online to help you explore this option.
Always Have a 5 Year Plan
No matter what stage you are at in your career, a valuable exercise is to have a five-year plan; this does not even need to be fixed, in fact, it is probably desirable that this is edited and changed on a rolling basis. Things will always change, and you can adapt and alter your course based on the economy and industry trends. But what you should do is make these aims measurable in some way so that you can monitor your progress.