No matter where you are in your career, there is always something to learn. Many of the skills needed to be successful at work are not learned formally but require time and effort to acquire. Soft skills, such as prioritizing, collaboration, communication, and problem-solving, are skills that you may not realize how much there is to know about. Take some time to evaluate what you have learned already and where you would like to learn more, and then find a way to do so.
Take on a new project. Look around your workplace for something that is not currently being done but that would be useful for the organization and interesting or useful to you, and offer to do it. Some examples might be documenting standard operating procedures, developing a new assay to add to your company’s offerings, or identifying a potential new market for your organization’s products or services—think, ideas your management has wanted to do but hasn’t found anyone willing to do.
Find a mentor. Seek out a colleague who is doing something you’d like to learn, and ask if you can help them. Ask for resources to study on your own, to make yourself as useful as possible. Make sure that any time they spend teaching you is more than made up for by the time you save them by doing as much as you can, and research on your own before asking too many questions.
Take a class. Whether from your professional society, from your local community college or university night school, or even online, there are classes offered on virtually every topic. Decide what you want to learn and how much time and effort you want to invest. Maybe start with a short evening class, to see how it goes. Don’t forget to check into your benefits—many companies will reimburse employees for taking classes relevant to their work if they earn at least a certain grade. In addition to individual classes, look at certification programs that provide external validation of your expertise in a particular area.
Offer to teach. One of the best ways to learn something is to teach it to others. Is there a procedure or task that you can arrange to teach to a colleague or group of colleagues? In addition to then having backups for certain tasks if you become unavailable, their questions and ideas while learning will probably inspire you with new ways of thinking and maybe even spark ideas of how to improve what you are already doing.
Soft skills. Consider not only your technical skills but your soft skills. Have you started making presentations as part of your job, but you are not really comfortable with them? Have budgets and spreadsheets become part of your daily work, but you know you are not using them to their fullest advantage? Your local library or community college may have some helpful classes or support groups around general soft skills.
Whatever you learn, find ways to put it into practice. Even your best skills will decay over time if not used regularly. If you find yourself not learning anything new for a significant amount of time, it might be time to start thinking about a bigger career change.
Get involved in the discussion. The ACS Career Tips column is published monthly in C&EN. Send your comments and ideas for topics for future columns to [email protected].
