After a minimum of three to five years on the job, you would have gathered experience compared to a fresh graduate or a management trainee. However, you still have ladders to climb on the job. These are practical tips that can help:

Best Practice and Professionalism: Uphold best practices and build professionalism in your field of work. Do things by the set-up rules and regulations of the career, don’t bend rules or manipulate them. Such an individual must understand the principle of management by Objective and that his or her employment in the organization is to achieve certain organizational objectives. A clear picture of what is expected to do will help such a person work in line with the company's focus and get the job done.

Also, try to always meet deadlines when given assignments. It shows a sense of capability, responsibility and reliability on your part. As part of a professional practice, teamwork must be taken seriously, to easily, effectively and efficiently complete important assignments. When you accept to work with others you increase the odds of being successful and effective.

Continuous Training: Aside from the basic higher education that is required, continuous training and personal development are also key. One needs to get trained and retrained on the job and also get the required qualifications.

This is very important because if you rely on what you learned in school, that alone cannot take you anywhere in your career. Though an ideal organization is expected to train its staff, you need to do beyond that yourself. When you fail to get trained you can be likened to water which is in a stationary position and does not flow, at some point, it begins to stink. There is no limit to information, it is that which keeps you ahead of others and it is only available to those who seek it.

Having worked as a Telecom sales professional I understand how to generate leads, find prospects and turn them into opportunities, and follow up by selling value propositions at a point where I have to tell myself that telecoms knowledge goes beyond selling the value of your solution or service, discussing financials and end up sending an invoice for payment to get my deal closed. I have got to seek practical knowledge of how the solution I am selling works. I got to understand more about the bandwidths, connectivity, types of micro radios, how site surveys are carried out and other technical knowhow that can be of help to my sales.

Think of your career as if you are building blocks, each block represents a set of skills. Do whatever it takes to acquire the skill and take the training that will take you to the next level on your job.

Be Ambitious: To grow in your chosen career, you need to be ambitious, being ambitious does not support being greedy. One may be greedy and hungry for growth but he or she is mediocre with little or nothing to offer, only testing for an undeserved position.

A successful professional should be ready to raise the bar and do better than previous efforts. The likes of Mohammed Ali, Ronaldo, and Lionel Messi, just don’t stop training because they won world titles once, they tasted for medals and retention of glory and ended up getting titles more than once.

It should be noted that your ambition should be driven by a strong will and goal, if you are ambitious but lack focus, you can’t achieve success.

You must also identify benchmarks and other important objectives as you work along in your career.

However, being ambitious means you should focus on what you can do and not what you should do.

Be innovative: you need to be outstanding and think outside the box. Being an underdog and mediocre is not a characteristic of a person who wants to build a successful career.

To achieve this, experience is not required, but thinking differently. Looking at things differently and trying to see how you can contribute is what innovation is all about. Work smarter not harder, it will help you do well and move up in your career at a rapid pace.

Be a Motivator: If you attain the position of a team lead or Manager, you need to learn how to get people to do the best they can. Leadership still differs from one person to another. Authenticity is important in leadership. Be yourself and leverage your strength, be authentic and work within the framework of your personality to get people to follow you.

People respect and like people, it may appear as if they don’t like you at first, but they will end up realizing you are real.

Network: It is very important in building a professional career; it’s an exchange of information and support. LinkedIn is a very useful tool for doing this. Other ways are through contacting old friends and business partners, and attending conferences, seminars and exhibitions.

Professional development: This helps you to be marketable. When you get more skill and education you are on your road to promotion. This will also enable you to change and get better jobs.

Performance Evaluation: You don’t have to fear being evaluated by your line manager when it's appraisal time. Let the way you work speak for you that you are an outstanding team member and deserve an excellent evaluation.

We continue next week....