Six Tips to Front Foot Your Career
          in an Economic Crisis



Six Tips to Front Foot Your Career in an Economic Crisis

Mar-Apr 2009  Print

Despite the redundancies, hiring freezes and company restructures currently taking place within Australia’s business community, you can still front foot your career in the global financial crisis. The crisis – while devastating to many people and businesses across all industries – can also deliver opportunities for savvy workers.


Skills for Keeping Your Career Goals on Track

These opportunities derive from soft skills which encompass how we interact with each other: personality, communication and attitudes. Here are six ways how you can still achieve your career goals and get ahead despite a challenging economic climate:

1. Actively listen - listen more than you speak.
By demonstrating sound communication skills, you will engage your audience in the conversation and build a better relationship. Remove your ego, summarise out loud what was said to check for accuracy and ask intelligent questions.

2. Use every opportunity to network - even if you're not looking for a new job, it is always important to continue to build and maintain your industry relationships. Accept every invitation. This can help identify new customers, uncover competitor information or simply position you as an industry contact with excellent contacts; an attractive asset to potential employers.

3. Practice your presentation skills - being able to conduct yourself appropriately in front of an audience for five minutes is a necessary skill to have. Practice this. You never know where you're going to be called upon to present and it could make or break opinions of you.

4. Identify an opportunity to manage a project - even if it is an internal project, ensure you gain experience in managing others. Being viewed in a leadership position is critical to show that you are a valuable employee, can make decisions and are willing to accept responsibility.

5. Demonstrate productivity - for example, effective delegation skills or goal setting will show that you can effectively manage your time. Ensure you communicate these skills to your network

6. Improve email communication - as one of the main methods of written communication, email often fails to achieve the purposes its senders seek to achieve. Include as much white space in emails as possible for ease of reading - use dot points, short paragraphs and write clearly and concisely. Keep your audience in mind when writing and always include a short summary at the top.

DDLS conducts a wide range of courses suited to improving these soft skills. These courses include Negotiation Skills, Time Management, Communication Skills, Leadership, Business Writing and Presentation Skills.

For further information or to book a course, please contact DDLS
on 13 12 01 www.DDLS.com.au