A new year offers us a chance to set resolutions and follow through. If you want some advice on how to fast track your accounting career, here are 5 goals to help you reach the next rung on the promotional ladder.
5 Goals to Fast Track Your Accounting Career
Goals 1: Cultivate a New Skill
Identify any new reporting standards, regulatory measures or legislative challenges that will impact the market. Cultivate a skill attached to those changes, like utilizing AI to track regulation changes or using financial modelling to analyze data and tell the story about what’s happening with the numbers.
Goal 2: Commit to Networking
Create networking goals and stick to them. A reasonable goal is 3 face-to-face meetings per month. Opportunities to fast track your accounting career will come from people you know, so networking is a critical step to moving your professional life forward. Beyond face-to-face meetings, you can utilize social media platforms like Twitter and LinkedIn to connect with people and expand your network, engage with their content, and have conversations to deepen your relationships.
Goal 3: Understand Organizational Goals
Understand company goals and proactively tailor your efforts toward those areas. Look within your role and identify where you can go above and beyond your day-to-day duties. You will find that you can fast track your accounting career when your actions contribute toward corporate strategic goals. This will differentiate you in the organization. After all, those who drive the business forward get promoted.
Goal 4: Dress for Success
People often discount the importance of dressing for success. Think about who you are interacting with. How does your CFO dress? How does the board dress? Dress for the role you want, not just the role you have.
Read: “Dress for the Job You Want” to learn how to dress to impress.
Goal 5: Set Goals and Measure
Set some reasonable goals and then track yourself against them every month or quarter. Ask yourself how you’re trending against your goal. Are there numbers or qualitative measures you can look at? Keep a journal or an Excel document to be able to pull data for performance reviews. Most importantly, analyze the data. If you’re successfully hitting your goals, is there a way to ramp up and achieve even more? If you aren’t hitting your goals, how can you improve? Finally, implement controls that you will hold yourself accountable to. If you’re not taking accountability for your goals, your plan to fast track your accounting career will not come to fruition.
Read: Want more information on how to set effective goals and measure them? Read this.
Key Takeaways
Think about how to fast-track your finance or accounting career for 2017. Cultivate a new skill that’s tied to legislative changes or organizational objectives. Create networking goals and stick to them. Dress for the job you want, not the job you have. Most importantly, with any goal you set, make sure you establish a way to measure your success and document your achievements. Fundamentally, when it comes time for performance reviews, or a conversation about promotion, you want to be ready to talk about how you delivered for your company.
Your Next Step
No one should walk the job search or hiring road alone. At Clarity Recruitment we help others realize their success through a process that marries proprietary technology with unwavering commitment. Contact us today to take control of your career, or to partner with us to hire well.
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