Advancing your career from the confines of your house might seem unconventional, and yet all the tools that you need to progress professionally can be accessed from your home.
Whether you have started working remotely, whether COVID-19 has affected your career plans, or whether you are trying to progress your career while looking after the kids, there are many ways that you can keep your career on the right path without once leaving the house.
Then, here are some of the best tips that you can follow if you are looking to ensure that your career continues to thrive.
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1. Create a Home Office
When you start looking to succeed in your career from your house, it is vital that you create a home office that can promote hard work and productivity.
Working from home and even conducting a job search at home can be extremely difficult, especially if you have distractions in the form of kids or other family members.
Then, you need to build a space that will allow you to focus on the task at hand, and that will ensure that you can work hard enough to meet the deadlines that have been set for you.
Then, to create a home office that can cultivate your career, you should make sure that it has all of the tech infrastructure that you will need inside it, such as business laptops and a strong Wi-Fi connection.
You should also make sure that it has a lot of natural light inside of it and that it is painted in a bright, neutral color, which can boost your mood. Your home office should also be separate from other parts of the house.
Converting a garage, attic, or spare room into your new office space is often the best option for those that are looking for peace and quiet while they work, although many people are now seeing the advantages of building a garden office.
2. Get an Online Degree
One of the top steps you can take to advance your career from home is to take an online degree.
Taking an online degree can be a particularly good step to take if you are struggling to find the job of your dreams due to a lack of qualifications or knowledge or if your study plans had previously been put on hold due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Then, achieving an online degree will allow you to study your chosen subject without once having to leave the house. In most cases, you will instead have access to a digital portal.
This digital portal will contain videos of lectures, as well as a discussion forum on which you can discuss topics that you are unsure about with the people who are studying the same course as you.
You can even hand in all of your assignments and get your results online.
If you are worried about whether online degrees are recognized by employers, you should know that most employers now think highly of online degrees due to improvements in the quality of the education that they provide.
Then, to find a course that can help you to meet success, you should look at what higher education institutions such as Emerson College have to offer.
For instance, at Emerson College, they offer a Masters in Digital Marketing that can help you to get into business and to work for prestigious organizations within their modern marketing departments.
3. Look for Freelancing Gigs
However, if you are struggling to find a job at home, or if you are still uncertain about finding office work due to COVID-19 fears, you should consider looking around for the freelancing gigs that are on offer.
There is always a vast abundance of freelancing gigs across the internet that will allow you to work on your own terms wherever you want to.
Some of the freelancing roles that are popular with career-minded people include translation services, web design services, and digital marketing services.
Not only can you complete these projects remotely, but their short-term nature means that you will not be locked into a contract with an employer.
Freelancing is not always easy, though. Although it can allow you to get the skills and experience that you need to then search for employment, you also need to take control of your own private pension and your own invoices.
You may also need to continue to search for freelancing opportunities regularly and to have excellent written communication skills that will allow you to maintain a good relationship with your clients.
4. Look for Recruitment Agencies
You do not have to put all the effort into progressing your career yourself if you want to advance your career at home, though.
Instead, there are many recruitment agencies that you can contact who will be able to search for job opportunities in your stead and connect you with potential employers who you might be interested in working for.
However, it can be difficult to find a good recruitment agency that will offer you jobs that you are interested in, and that will allow you to succeed in your career.
Then, you should ask other professionals about the best recruitment agencies and look for agencies that solely serve people in your industry. These experts will have more specialized knowledge about the sector in which you work.
5. Keep on the Ball at Virtual Meetings
If you work remotely, this does not mean that you can grow lax and that you do not have the opportunity to shine.
Rather than simply tuning out of virtual meetings with your manager and your colleagues, you should make sure that you keep on the ball.
You should continue to offer your ideas and make your voice heard regardless of what setting you are meeting in.
This will help to ensure that you are memorable to your manager when it comes to promotions and will allow you to stand out against your other colleagues.
This can then help you to advance your career in the long-term as your manager is more likely to believe that you are ready to take on new responsibilities and think of you when an opening presents itself.
6. Produce High-Quality Work
The best step that you can take toward advancing your career if you are working from home, though, is to carry on producing high-quality work.
One of the fears that many employers have when they decide to allow their employees to work remotely is that their employees will fail to be as productive as they are in the office and that their standard of work will go down.
Then, you should prove to your manager that their worries were unfounded by making sure that the quality of your work does not change.
If you are worried about the distractions that are around your home, you should consider downloading a productivity app for your mobile that can effectively keep you focused.
You should also make sure that you develop a schedule and routine within which you can fit in all of the work that you need to do around your other responsibilities while still getting the downtime that you need to refresh your mind and to stay healthy.
7. Take Time Off
Although you might think that the only way to advance your career at home is through constant work, this is not the case.
It can be difficult to separate your working life from your home life when you work from home since all the equipment that you need to work will be by your side 24/7.
In addition to this, many people decide that they are going to do hundreds of hours of overtime to impress their manager and to advance their career.
However, even though this shows your boss that you are willing to work extra and to take on additional responsibilities, it can also mean that your standard of work starts to slip, that you begin to rush work, or that you are not as alert as you were before.
Then, rather than focusing on doing as much work as possible, you should decide to follow the approach of quality over quantity.
This means that you should take time off regularly, especially if you are starting to feel burned out.
Once you have taken this time off to reassess your working life and to relax, you will usually find that you will return to work with new ideas and inspiration and with a new zest that you had previously lost.
8. Continue to Take New Opportunities
When you are working from home, you might begin to feel as if you are out of the loop in terms of all the new opportunities that are available, especially if you have stopped going to meetings or speaking with your colleagues.
Not only this, but it can be difficult to advance your career from home as you might not hear about job opportunities that have been advertised in a physical way, such as on office windows or through word of mouth.
However, regardless of the way that you are working or looking to advance your career, you need to make sure that you do not get complacent when it comes to finding the best opportunities that are out there.
As well as continuing to connect with your workplace, you should replace the physical means that you previously had of looking for opportunities with the wealth of opportunities that the digital world presents to you.
For instance, you can use job websites to look for new openings and use email and social media to contact firms about the opportunities that are available within their companies.
9. Make Sure You Are Well-Known
It can be easy to slip out of sight when you are at home, especially if you have decided not to go into the office at all.
However, if you want to advance your career, you must ensure that you are well-known and that you are still active within your industry.
For instance, if you work from home, you might consider popping into your office occasionally or even going to social events.
If you do not already have a job, you should start to build up your online presence and ensure that this is active at all times.
For instance, you might decide to create a social media account or a personal website or blog for yourself.
If you do this, you should make sure that you create posts regularly and that you automate them to go live at the same time every day or week.
One of the best social media websites to create an account on is LinkedIn, as this platform is for professionals and businesses only.
10. Build Your Connections
Lastly, if you are looking to build up your connections from afar, you should attend digital networking events and connect with people on social media.
You should also consider harnessing the network that you already have, whether this is alumni from your time at university or colleagues and managers from your past jobs.
You should also make sure that you continue to speak to your colleagues and your manager when you are working from home.
This will ensure that people do not forget about you and that they continue to think highly of you, even if they have not seen you in person for many months.
Although once there might have been minimal opportunities to progress your career from your house, with the rise of the internet, this is luckily not now the case.
However, it is still important to be as proactive as possible when you are looking to advance your career from home or when you are working remotely.
For instance, you should make sure that you continue to learn by signing up for online courses and qualifications, that you find a reliable recruitment agency that can help you to secure the perfect job for you, and that you continue to search for all of the opportunities that are available to you online.
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