What to learn at different stages of career development

Higher education alone is not enough to build a successful career. Moreover, in some cases it is not at all a necessary condition for obtaining a good position.

According to research Rambler & Co, held in 2022, only 53% of Russians work in their specialty. And it's easy to explain. Young people enter the university, whose interests change with age. Over time, many realize that this is not at all what they want to do in reality.

And here the question arises: how to build further education into your career track in such a way that all knowledge and skills are really relevant.

Even if you work in your specialty, this does not mean that your training is over. Knowledge can become obsolete, working tools can change. For example, until recently, no one used services like Chat GPT in their work, and now many specialists are betting on this trend. And in this case, additional education is indispensable.

Reality requires us to follow the concept of lifelong learning - “lifelong learning”. And only this will allow maintaining high competitiveness in the labor market.

What to learn at different stages of career development

Topics and areas of study should change depending on work experience and career goals. This allows you to bind education to real professional development.

Learn what you can apply right now. You should not gain knowledge for the future: without practice, everything will quickly be forgotten.

1. Young specialist - work experience up to 5 years

A young specialist needs to bet on the development of hard skills, that is, on basic professional skills: to learn put into practice tools and methods, learn from more experienced colleagues and market experts, study successful cases of others companies. And look for opportunities to use all this in your work.

For example, for a sales professional it would be useful to study the following topics:

• Negotiation.
• Development of commercial offers.
• Preparing presentations.
• Work with objections.
• Identification of customer needs.
• Effective use of CRM systems.

2. Experienced specialist - has been working for 5-10 years

This is a great time to explore related areas that will make your work more efficient. For example, a sales professional would benefit from learning about marketing tools. This will expand professional opportunities: it will help to better understand customers, use new effective methods in work and speak the same language with marketing department specialists.

If you have been planning to get a leadership position for a long time or are preparing for a promotion, then at this stage it is worth developing managerial skills. For example, learn to build relationships with the team, increase the motivation of employees, hold meetings, delegate responsibilities - all these areas will allow you to become really effective leader.

In addition, it is important to engage in the development of soft skills (soft skills), which increase personal effectiveness. Regardless of the field of activity, experienced professionals should master time management, learn to negotiate, pump emotional intellect and self-motivation. All this seriously affects career growth.

Professional achievements are, of course, important. But it is soft skills that make a good specialist a true professional who motivates and leads colleagues.

3. Expert - over 10 years of experience

This is a time of thoughtful work on yourself. And your educational strategy should include several directions at once, which can be alternated from year to year:

• Hard skills. In any profession, there are trends and changes that need to be constantly monitored. Otherwise, your knowledge and skills will become obsolete and you will lose value in the labor market.
• Soft skills. Review your successes and failures regularly. This will allow you to clearly identify what soft skills you are missing. For example, if you often miss deadlines, maybe you have problems with time management? And if you sit too long in one place and want more, perhaps you should upgrade the skill of setting and achieving goals. Try at least once every six months to conduct such a mini-analysis and consider new opportunities for growth.
• Management and personnel management. These skills are relevant for leaders any level: from beginners to top management. They allow you to find an approach to employees, increase their motivation and achieve greater performance. For example, the topics of recruitment, setting and monitoring tasks, feedback and motivation are universal here. Start with these areas, and then select options based on current work needs.

And if you feel that you need a comprehensive and versatile approach to business development or team management, then you should consider long-term MBA training programs. In addition, such a diploma is an additional high status and a big plus for a resume in the future job search.

How to build a learning strategy

Lifelong learning is no longer about a full-fledged higher or secondary specialized education, but about learning within short but effective formats. These can be advanced training or professional retraining courses, webinars, professional conferences and forums, business literature, various training videos - in general, everything that can help you get the necessary knowledge in the right volume.

The ideal learning strategy includes different tools and formats. This allows you to learn something little by little, but constantly. For example, it might look like this:

• Training on courses - 1-2 times a year.
• Participation in webinars - 1 time in 2-3 months.
• Watching training videos - 1 time per week.
• Reading business literature daily.

The main thing is to record all the important information in the learning process and think about how you can apply it in practice. This will help to quickly and efficiently turn new knowledge into real actions that will lead to the desired results.