Level Up Your Career With These 7 Professional Development Tips

1. Establish your goals

Professional development can be considered anything that makes you more efficient and skilled at your current role and more prepared for your future career. It’s an area where you focus on bettering yourself, whether it is a technical skill like learning generative AI or a non-technical skill such as achieving clearer interpersonal communication. 

To be able to identify what your goal for professional development is, try answering these questions:

• What are my current roles and responsibilities?
• What do I enjoy doing? What do I avoid doing?
• Where do I want to see myself in the next few months and years? This could be a level of proficiency concerning a certain skill set, a job title, or even a different organization.
• What motivates me? What is my driving factor?

Answering the above questions might not be the easiest, and it’s okay not to have answers right away. I follow what I call the 4R Model: read, record, review, and reflect. This helps me find answers and directions for my starting points and potential destinations. I may not know what my journey is going to look like, but knowing what I’m trying to achieve will get me there.

2. Use your resources

My broad strokes goal when I started my professional development journey was to be a better version of myself each day. Tomorrow’s Yukta should be better than today’s or yesterday’s Yukta. 

I read and consumed a lot in the beginning. When I say reading, I  don’t just mean books. I mean seeking knowledge and ideas in all areas. This can be done by listening to podcasts, watching videos, observing the outside world, and having engaging and interesting conversations with friends, family, and colleagues. 

In your explorations, digitally capture the ideas and projects that interest you. Once you’ve collected what you want to focus on, organize everything based on actionability and feasibility. Make a point to see if these new ideas tie to your personal and professional goals and if they align with the interests of your team, organization, and leadership.

For example, I learned that I liked project management, and I wanted to explore that to a level where I could be confident about it. I decided to apply that in my professional day-to-day work to contribute to my team. I started reading about project management and its principles. I don’t want to jump into certifications and courses directly. It requires a lot of commitment, investment of time, and money. Before I do that, I’d love to see what other people my age and my set of skills and experience are doing in the project management space. 

3. Seek out a mentor

I recommend having a mentor, and this is regardless of where you are in your professional life. When I joined G2, I looked for someone within my team to help mentor me. They should ideally be someone senior you can turn to for guidance or someone whose journey looks like the one you daydream about for yourself. 

My suggestion to most of my peers or friends is to have two mentors: one within your team and one external. This helps give you a broader point of view and less bias when it comes to input and feedback. 

I found my mentor by simply asking as candidly as possible. When I  reached out, I remembered to keep my communications brief, while still expressing who I was. I also told them why I was interested in their mentorship, how I thought they could guide me, and which areas I needed to improve. 

To capture their attention, I mentioned their work – an article, a podcast, a blog post  – and I told them how it resonated with me. That set common ground for our communication.

4. Grow your professional network

Communicating, networking, and growing your professional network is a must. There are so many people outside of our circle of friends, family, and workspaces who are doing what you want to be doing in your career. 

5. Communicate your needs

Communication in the area of professional development means maintaining and facilitating reciprocal communication with your manager, peers, team, and all relevant stakeholders. 

6. Be open to feedback

Feedback has played a very important role in shaping me. I think it’s best to seek feedback proactively from your colleagues. I usually schedule some time quarterly or semi-annually to reach out to my manager and people from teams I work closely with. This helps me get an unbiased idea of areas I need to focus on and tasks that perform well.