Whether you want a complete change of direction or are looking to progress from your current role, the way to give yourself the best chance of achieving your career goals is to add more skills to your CV. 

With most industries experiencing competitive job markets, you need to be able to get an advantage over the competition for the job you want to land. If you have similar experience and qualifications to other candidates, you might struggle to get an interview unless you can offer more skills that your potential employer could benefit from.

If you want to kickstart your career in 2022, here are some of the ways you can gain new skills:

Take an online course

You can gain work related qualifications by completing online courses from a wide range of training providers. From developing administration skills for courses such as Excel to undertaking a health and safety course or a PA course, there are so many different types of skills you can learn and gain a recognised certificate that can build your career and CV.

Do some volunteer work

A barrier for many job applicants is that they do not have enough working experience. If you lack experience in the industry you want to work in, you could try doing some voluntary work that could help you to build up experience and develop the knowledge and skills that an employer will be looking for.

Educate yourself

You can also develop your skills and knowledge through self-education, by reading relevant blogs, books, listening to podcasts and watching online tutorials. Even though this knowledge might not carry as much weight as formal qualifications, it will give you the foundation to impress in the studied topics during interviews.

Job shadowing

If you are hoping to progress from your current role into a more senior role, you might have the opportunity to do some job shadowing. If your company does not already run a mentoring scheme, you could ask your manager if you could shadow a more senior employee to learn skills from them.

Become a mentor

If you are fairly experienced in your current role and you are hoping to progress into a management role, you could volunteer to mentor less experienced staff. This will give you a chance to develop your leadership and communication skills and if the mentoring is successful, you should have an improved chance of moving into a managerial role.

Networking

You can also build up your connections and develop new skills by attending networking events. There may be some groups that you can join or conferences where you can meet other people working in your chosen industry. By learning more about the work that people outside of your immediate team or company do, you build up a stronger industry-wide knowledge. 

Networking events also give you the opportunity to improve your communication skills by talking to new people. The people that you meet might have job opportunities that you were not aware of and it will look good if you have connected with people on LinkedIn that work for the company you apply for a job at. The recruiter may even ask your connections for some feedback about you based on your interactions.

Start planning for the next stage of your career and get 2022 off to a great start. Developing a detailed career plan including some of these recommendations will help to ensure you stay on track for reaching your goals.