TIPS ON HOW TO BOOST YOUR VALUE IN THE JOB MARKET
Businesses pay for value. The more value one brings to the company, the more they deserve to be a part of it. In this era of ever-increasing competition in the labour market, the most effective way to stand out among other job applicants is the value you bring to the table. Here are a few tips on how to do it.
- Develop a specialty
Acquiring new skills while keeping your qualifications updated is crucial for career success. Take short courses to boost the skills you’d want to develop further. Your education, knowledge, skills, and experience all are investments in your ability to contribute value in a company for which you can be paid. The world is moving fast and rapidly changing. Employers need to make sure that their employees are skilled and are well equipped to deal with these rapid changes. In order to be the best, you need to have something that nobody else has and developing a specialty gives you a competitive advantage.
- Increase Expertise
Become an expert in a niche in your industry. This will make you easily recognizable among your peers and will automatically increase your worth in the job market. Study your industry and learn from your competitors. Becoming an expert in your area is a signal to any potential employer that you’re conscious of your growth and professional development.
- Have a mentor
Mentoring is important, not only because of the knowledge and skills one can learn from mentors but also because mentoring provides professional and personal support to facilitate success in the job market. Quality mentoring greatly enhances one’s chances of success. Mentors find ways to stimulate our personal and professional growth, they can see where we need to improve where we often cannot and can be very helpful connectors to important networks.
- Be aware of yourself
Start viewing yourself as a product and cultivate your strong selling points. Do a self-assessment and figure out where exactly your talents, skills and capabilities lie. Being self-aware will help you identify your strengths and your weaknesses, know the areas you need to improve on, and the areas you can focus on when marketing yourself. This is the first essential step towards effectively selling yourself as the perfect candidate.
- Network
I know we are always telling you to network and yes, its because we know how effective it is. Network both online and offline. Talk about your interests, not about you looking for a job and you’ll realize other professionals will want to talk and connect with you.
- Keep your resume updated
You need to keep up with changing trends and update any new skills you’ve acquired or experience. This will help present you as an expert. Making sure your CV is up to date will help you to hit the ground running if you need to look for alternative employment. The more frequently you update your CV, the less work you'll need to do when you need to use it.
It is never too late to be what you might have been. Start working on how you can add your value in the job market.