Hays NI's Cara Marks on top tips for how women can better their career

 - Contributed by Hays NI

Cara Marks, Business Director at Hays Northern Ireland, offers her top tips for how women can better their career this International Women’s Day and beyond.

1. Nurture your network

“Your network of contacts has the potential to be instrumental at any stage of your career, but the key to a strong network is focusing on building long term relationships. Realising the importance of strong professional contacts early on in your career and investing in them over time will help you nurture your network and ensure it provides you support when you need it.

“It’s important to not only reach out to your contacts to support you but also to think about what you can do for them and how you can add value to their network.”

2. Surround yourself with the best

“Surrounding yourself with strong contributors can be applied when building a team, working in a peer group or competing with your peers. Having others to compare yourself to is a healthy way to gauge how you are doing against your peers and can be a motivating element. Having respect for others you work with will also serve you well. Respecting every member of the team and what they bring to the team is important.”

3. Do the difficult tasks first

“Prioritisation is crucial to achieving what you need to do. Don’t let challenging tasks hang over you, and instead tackle these first so you can move on with your day and feel an early sense of accomplishment.

“As a working mum it’s also essential that I maximise my time in the office and know each day what I need to achieve. Having ambitious but realistic goals around what can be achieved in one day also helps to maintain a sense of achievement and balance.”

4. Plan your progression

“For anyone wanting to progress in their career, a clear plan of how to do this will be hugely beneficial. Set yourself long and short-term objectives and plot a specific timeline for when you hope to achieve them by. Often the more specific your progression plan is, the more accountable you feel to commit to it.”

5. Commit to continuously learning

“Successful individuals across all levels and sectors value the importance of learning. For me, this might be learning a new skill, taking a course or make a commitment to improve in an area I am weaker in.

“It’s important firstly to be able to identify and self-evaluate where you may need to learn a new skill to improve in something. Have the confidence to take responsibility for your own professional development and align continued learning with your career progression and ambitions.”