Moving on up – seven key ways to get ahead in your career

Felicity Evans • May 5, 2015

Whether you think it’s about time people in the office realised what an asset you are, or you think you could be better paid and more fulfilled somewhere else entirely, you’ll need to do some homework before you take the plunge…

Get yourself connected
If you haven’t already, join LinkedIn, the leading online social networking platform for professionals looking to keep up-to-date with what’s happening in their industries and to connect with each other. It’s easy and free to set up an account, and the more you use it the more you’ll attract attention from people who could be future employers or clients. If you really want to impress, consider setting up a website that focuses on the professional side of your life (this is also easy and free to do, with WordPress). You can showcase projects you’ve worked on and use a blog to highlight your expertise and knowledge.

Goal!
It’s easy to spend time daydreaming about your career promotion and all the things you’ll buy with the pay rise that goes with it – but make sure those dreams act as motivation to achieve something real rather than as an easy alternative to making proper changes. Take time to think about where you’d like to be in a year’s time, in five years’ time, and in ten years’ time, and use the list of goals you come up with to help build a truly workable plan for progress.

Time to skill up
If you’ve discovered that the next level up in your profession requires skills and knowledge you don’t have, there’s no need to panic – it could be a blessing in disguise. Taking a relevant course will help refresh your mind and reinvigorate your love for your job, as well as earn you respect at work and show that you have the get-up-and-go required for potential promotion. If your organisation has a policy of funding education for employees – beyond obligatory health and safety courses – you might even find they can pay for your training.

Find a mentor
If you have someone in your life that you admire, who has achieved some or maybe all of the things you too would like to achieve, it’s time to adopt them as a mentor. Take them out to lunch and ask if they wouldn’t mind giving you some career advice, telling you about the mistakes they made and – perhaps – letting you bounce some ideas off them from time to time.

Befriend your boss
If you and your boss don’t get on at all, it’s definitely something to bear in mind when going for a promotion: in other words, you might not stand a chance of getting it. However, if your boss is a friend, or at least a warm acquaintance, then it’s a good idea to approach them with your plans for advancement. If they are leaving or have been promoted, then they can give you a full and rounded picture of what their old job entails if you want to apply for it, and if you want to move sideways and up, then they can fill you in on what’s expected in terms of management, responsibility and workload at that level.

Think about your team
If there’s a vacancy left by a departing boss, it’s odds-on that you won’t be the only one in your department looking to fill it – dealing with being a gracious victor or a decent loser is certainly something to consider. You also need to be very honest with yourself about a potential change from team-mate to manager: will your old peers respect you? Will you feel comfortable telling them to do things? Will you deal firmly and quickly with problematic behaviour? If the answer to any of these is ‘no’, you’re on shaky ground.

Dress the part
Finally, don’t underestimate the power of ‘smart’. Even if your workplace operates a relaxed dress code and you enjoy stretching that description to the max, brushing your hair and/or beard and slipping into a jacket will do you no harm at all. Even if your intelligence and ability are off the scale, if you spend meetings surreptitiously scraping egg yolk off your ‘What Would Spock Do?’ t-shirt, management will notice, and almost certainly place you in the ‘not one of us’ box…

The Neurodiversity Advantage: Tapping into Overlooked Talent Pools

August 18, 2025
Here's an uncomfortable truth for the recruitment industry: we're systematically excluding some of the most talented individuals from our candidate pools. While neurodiversity-related job postings have nearly quadrupled from 1% to 3.8% in recent years, the stark reality remains that just 31% of people with autism are in employment compared to 54.7% of disabled people overall. In a UK market where employers are struggling with talent shortages and the fight for skilled professionals has never been fiercer, this represents a monumental waste of human potential. The recruitment industry has a problem, and it's one of our own making. Traditional recruitment processes are designed by neurotypical minds for neurotypical candidates, creating barriers that systematically filter out neurodivergent talent. But here's the kicker: teams with neurodivergent professionals are 30% more productive than those without and boast a 90% employee retention rate. If you're not implementing neurodiversity recruitment strategies, you're not just missing out—you're actively disadvantaging your clients and your business in an increasingly competitive market.

Digital Portfolio: Showcasing Your Work in a Crowded Online Market

By Karl Montgomery • August 18, 2025
Here's a hard truth that might sting: your CV isn't enough anymore. In today's hypercompetitive UK job market, where unemployment has reached 4.6% and over 100,000 jobs were lost between April and May 2025, standing out isn't just advantageous—it's essential for survival. With 52% of working-age adults unable to complete all 20 basic digital tasks that industry and government agree are essential for work, the candidates who can demonstrate their digital competency through a professional portfolio will have a significant advantage. But here's the controversial bit: most professionals are creating portfolios completely wrong. They're either treating them as glorified CV extensions or cramming them with irrelevant work that dilutes their impact. If you're serious about career advancement, it's time to master professional digital portfolio creation properly.

Recruitment Marketing Metrics That Matter - Measuring Campaign Effectiveness Beyond Applications

By Karl Montgomery • July 22, 2025
Here's a statement that will make every recruitment leader squirm: Your recruitment marketing is burning money, and you don't even know it. While you're celebrating that uptick in applications, your actual quality hires are plummeting. While you're patting yourself on the back for lower cost-per-application, your cost-per-quality-hire is spiralling out of control. And while you're obsessing over job board metrics, your competitors are leveraging recruitment marketing analytics to dominate the talent market. The harsh reality? 57% of marketers use leads to measure the success of their marketing initiatives. In recruitment terms, that's like judging a restaurant by how many people walk past the door instead of how many actually buy a meal and come back for more.

The Remote Work CV Gap - How to Address Employment Fluctuations During the Pandemic Era

By Karl Montgomery • July 22, 2025
Here's a controversial statement that'll ruffle some feathers: Your pandemic career gap is not the liability you think it is—it's actually your secret weapon. While you've been losing sleep over that employment gap between March 2020 and whenever you landed back on your feet, the recruitment landscape has fundamentally shifted. That gap you're trying to hide? It's become so commonplace that more than half (53%) of all candidates screened in the last 12 months have career gaps on their CVs, according to employment screening provider Accurate Background. The pandemic didn't just change how we work—it rewrote the rules of what employers expect from a CV. If you're still approaching your pandemic career gap resume with pre-2020 thinking, you're not just behind the curve; you're potentially sabotaging your chances with outdated anxiety.

Beyond the ATS: How Semantic Search and AI Are Changing Candidate Discovery

By Karl Montgomery • July 14, 2025
Here's an uncomfortable truth that most recruitment leaders won't admit: your current ATS is actively sabotaging your ability to find the best candidates . While you've been religiously adding keywords to job descriptions and hoping for algorithmic magic, the most talented professionals have been slipping through your digital fingers – not because they lack the skills, but because they don't speak your system's rigid language. The recruitment technology revolution isn't coming. It's here. And it's fundamentally rewriting the rules of candidate discovery in ways that make traditional keyword-based systems look as outdated as fax machines in a WhatsApp world. Welcome to the age of AI candidate search technology, where understanding context matters more than matching words, and where the smartest recruitment teams are already gaining an almost unfair advantage over those still stuck in Boolean search hell.

Salary Negotiation in the Age of Pay Transparency: How to Advocate for Your Worth Without Burning Bridges

By Karl Montgomery • July 14, 2025
Here's an uncomfortable truth: most of us are rubbish at negotiating our own worth . While 55% of job candidates don't even attempt to negotiate their salary, the very employers who'd benefit from their skills are sitting there wondering why talented people keep walking away from "generous" offers. But here's where it gets interesting – we're living through the biggest shift in workplace transparency since the gender pay gap reporting requirements landed in 2017. Pay transparency isn't just knocking at the UK's door; it's already reshaping how smart candidates approach salary conversations. The question isn't whether you should negotiate – it's whether you're equipped with the salary negotiation strategies that actually work in 2025.

The Food Manufacturing Skills Crisis: Bridging the Gap Between Industry 4.0 and Traditional Production Teams

By Karl Montgomery • May 14, 2025
The UK's food manufacturing sector stands at a critical crossroads. With advanced automation technologies revolutionising production processes, a significant disconnect has emerged between the sophisticated capabilities of Industry 4.0 systems and the skills of the existing workforce. This gap isn't just a minor operational challenge—it represents an existential threat to the sector's competitiveness, productivity, and long-term sustainability.

Last-Mile Innovation: How Logistics Leaders Are Redesigning Teams for the E-Commerce Era

By Karl Montgomery • May 14, 2025
The explosion of e-commerce has fundamentally transformed the logistics landscape, pushing traditional warehouse and distribution models beyond their limits. In the UK, where online penetration rates have increased from 9.3% to 26.6% between 2012 and 2022, logistics providers face mounting pressure to deliver faster, more flexible solutions while maintaining efficiency and controlling costs. This revolution isn't just changing what logistics teams do – it's transforming how they're structured, the skills they need, and the roles they're creating to meet the demands of the digital commerce age.

The Hidden Costs of Slow Hiring: Why Recruitment Efficiency Is Your Competitive Advantage

By Karl Montgomery • May 14, 2025
In today's fast-paced business environment, the ability to secure top talent quickly has become a critical competitive differentiator. Yet many organisations continue to struggle with prolonged hiring processes that not only frustrate candidates but also impact the bottom line in ways that often go unmeasured. While quality hiring decisions should never be rushed, there's a substantial difference between thorough assessment and unnecessary delays.

The Technical Interview Blueprint: How to Showcase Problem-Solving Skills Beyond Your CV

By Shazamme System User • May 12, 2025
In the competitive landscape of technical recruitment, your CV might secure you an interview, but it's your problem-solving prowess that will land you the job. Technical interviews have evolved far beyond simple knowledge checks, becoming sophisticated evaluations of how you approach challenges, communicate solutions, and adapt under pressure.
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