Are you content with your choice of career or do you feel like you could do something better and be a bit happier in your work? If the latter sounds more familiar to you, it might be time to look at improving your career prospects and doing something a little more fulfilling.

To help you with that, here are a few things that have been proven time and time again to help people move up the corporate ladder and into better work:

Taking a Course

Yes, this is a pretty obvious one, but it’s worth mentioning before we move onto other ideas because it is probably the most effective thing you can do to improve your long-term career prospects overall. Whether you enrol on a msn fnp program online, get your MBA in business from Harvard or simply take an IT course that enables you to offer more to prospective employers, the more educated you are, the more opportunities you will have. Education looks good on your resume, and continuing education shows that you’re serious about accumulating knowledge and skill. It makes you extremely marketable and will undoubtedly help you to reach your career goals whatever they might be.

Working on Your Communication Skills

It doesn’t matter whether you work in the retail sector, have a career as a nurse or you’re the manager of a large corporation, you need to be able to communicate with a wide range of people clearly and effectively.

Strong communicators ooze self-confidence, convince people that they know what they are doing/talking about and are able to give orders, negotiate and sell stuff with a lot more ease. So, you may want to consider enrolling on a public speaking course, spending more time networking to build up a rapport and get lots of practice talking to different people, or even joining Toastmasters, where you will be thrown into the deep end when it comes to communication.

It might be scary at first, but if you can master the art of communication, your career prospects will soar.

Networking Like a Pro

Often, in the world of work, it is who you know more than what you know that will determine how successful you are and whether you can work in your desired career or not. So, it makes sense that, if you want to improve your prospects, you should spend more time networking with people int he industry you want to enter.

Doing this will not only help you to build contacts but also knowledge about your chosen career, which will really show when you attend interviews, helping you to get hired.

Volunteering

Not only is volunteering a noble thing to do, but it could actually help you to improve your career prospects too.

When you volunteer, not only do you show prospective employers that you are a caring person who isn’t scared of hard work, but you can learn vital new skills that will enhance your resume and improve your chances of securing a better role, and if you’ve been out of work for a while, it will ensure that you don’t appear idle. It’s a great thing to do for yourself and others.

If you want to make a career change, work on yourself first and you’ll find it so much easier to succeed!

This post has been contributed by Ryan Gatt, it may contain affiliate links.