Do you need some career inspiration for your Christmas break? Are you thinking about how to boost your career in the New Year, or even find a new one altogether?
To help you, we’ve put together a list of our top career stories for 2014. Which one can you relate to the best? Which stories have we left off that you loved?
1. This October, we published our inaugural 31 most powerful part-timers list, to show that women do not have to choose between flexibility and leadership. These powerful workers prove you can be the acting director of a government agency, the head of department at one of Australia’s big four banks, and even the CIO of the Australian Securities Exchange while being a part time worker and having the flexibility to attend to family commitments. Who will be on next year’s list?
2. If one of the top things on our list of career questions is how to manage flexible work, another is how to get the salary we deserve. At the end of the last financial year, we published a three-step guide to asking for a pay rise. In order to optimise your pay rise conversation, make sure you time the conversation well, initiative the conversation by being clear about your intentions and make sure you have evidence to back up your request. Are you thinking about asking for a pay rise in the New Year? Re-read our tips here.
3. According to last year’s Stress and Wellbeing survey, one in four women experience moderate to severe levels of stress regularly, and many of the stressors contributing to these levels disproportionately affect women at work. We looked into exactly which factors were causing stress levels in working women to be so high: do things like work/life balance, household responsibilities, weak superannuation funds and lack of job satisfaction sound familiar? We put together a list of the main issues causing women at work to feel severely stressed, as well as some tips on how to overcome them.
4. Have you mastered the way you talk about your passion for your work? We’ve got some specific tips on how to perfect it. And what if you don’t know how, or even if, your passions align with your work? Following these steps will help you figure it out.
5. Do you know what kind of leader you are? Sandra Bannister explains in this piece the difference between the four kinds of leaders, and how to enhance the positive leadership skills you possess and control the negative ones. When it comes to your leadership style, are you an artist, a teacher, an operator or a firefighter? In tricky situations, does your instinct to collaborate or control win out?
6. Do you sometimes feel like you can never get it right when it comes to working and being a mum? Do you always feel like you are getting it wrong? Jocelyn Lowinger has some advice for you. After twenty years of feeing like she was always failing, Lowinger finally changed her mindset and realised she had been getting it right the whole time. How did she do it? By valuing her achievements, being kind to herself, finding benefits in her situation, looking for solutions and being authentic. Are you thinking about how to approach your life as a working mum in 2015? Here are her tips.
7. What is the best way to resign from your role? When is the best time? What happens if your boss begs you to stay? These are the questions we all agonise over when preparing to leave a job, but there are rarely any definitive answers. Here are Briana Everett’s tips for what to do when you are deciding whether to resign, when to resign and how to resign (and what not to do)
8. Having a few bad habits at work is okay, but having several of them and repeating them every day will end up compromising your career by draining you of precious time and energy. So what are the habiys ones you really need to break in the New Year? Things like saying yes too often, having lunch at your desk and excessive facebook browsing are some of the big ones. Read our full list of career-wrecking habits here.
9. Are you a boss or a leader? Do you know the difference? During your career, you may find yourself suddenly in a role managing a team or task. How do you know how to be a good leader? The difference between a boss and a leader easy to spot once you know what to look for – so we’ve put together a list of ways to tell which one you are, and how to hone your skills to nurture your leadership skills.
10. Are you struggling to commit to your career goals? Or, once you’ve committed to them, are you struggling to figure out how to achieve them? The New Year is the perfect time to rethink your attitude and reset your goals. Kiri Stejko is a recruitment expert who specialises in advancing women’s careers, and she knows a thing or two about how to move forward as a working woman. Here are her top ten tips for career advancement.