Stay and Grow: Unlocking Your Career Potential Within Your Current Company.

Before leaving your employer for what seems like greener pastures, weigh the potential downsides, such as losing established relationships and facing challenges in adapting to a new company culture. There’s also no guarantee that your new job will ultimately meet your expectations or resolve your dissatisfaction.

Staying with a supportive employer that values your career growth can offer significant benefits. Internal promotions and lateral moves within the organization can provide meaningful career development while preserving professional relationships and stability. Instead of a drastic career change, consider leveraging company-provided resources to acquire new skills or further your education, which can reignite your passion to enhance your career plan.

Upskilling, the process of learning new skills that can accelerate a worker's career advancement, may be the antidote for career stagnation. Training programs, workshops and tuition assistance programs are common upskilling vehicles, essetntial in this time of rapid technological advancement. 

For the employer, upskilling is a way of closing skills gaps - the areas where they lack sufficient talent to keep pace with evolving technologiesthey lack sufficient talent to keep pace with evolving technologies. Upskilling exisiting employees, those who are already part of the company's culture and workflows, can be a cost-efficient alternative to recuiting, hiring and training new talent from outside the company. 

For employees, upskilling can clear new career paths. Within a supportive culture, upskilling can enable you to acquire new competencies to help the company close skills gaps and be more responsive to new opportunities. In a classic win-win situation, you acquire skills to enhance your career potential, and your employer is able to more effectively use new technologies in operational areas like software development, information security, accounting and finance, supply chain and operations, healthcare and health informatics. 

In all of these areas, emerging technologies are requiring employers to upskill their teams or reskill them to take on new roles. 

When your acareer trajectory is aligned with your company's goals, staying can be the most sensible option. You may not realize how well your career goals could be aligned with your employer's needs. And you won't know until you have an important conversation with your manager. Our guide Stepping Up: How to Talk Education and Career Goals with Your Manager, can help get the conversation started. It can help you define your goals, identify opportunities for development and build a career path collaboratively, resulting in a career map that is not just aligned with your personal and professional goals, but also in synch with your company's objectives. 

Using your company's tuition benefits, you may acquire new skills and prepare to pursue industry-relevant certifications without leaving your employer and reducing the need for student loan debt. 

At DeVry University, we offer a range of degree and certificate programs that concentrate on the skills needed for today's economy and rapidly advancing technological environment. For example, our Undergraduate Certificate programs in Cyber Security or Cloud Computing can be completed 100% qonline and in a relatively short period of time, exposing you to hands-on skills that can be used immediately on the job. 

If your company doesn't offer tuition benefits, you may still be eligible to take advantage of tuition savings here at DeVry and our Keller Graduate School of Management through our employer education partnerships. Visit our website to search for your employer. Even if you don't find them there, our Admissions Representatives can look for ways to help make your education more affordable. 

Understanding your own career goals alongside your company’s needs allows you to take a proactive approach in mapping your career rather than reacting to circumstances as they arise. Utilizing tools like our Career Pathing Action Plan can help you create a strategic career plan by setting achievable goals and milestones and tracking your progress over time. Examples of career goals might include attaining a specific salary, advancing to a senior position, learning new technologies, enhancing workplace skills or improving work-life balance. By categorizing these goals into short-term and long-term objectives, you can make steady progress and make your long-term aspirations feel more attainable.

Additionally, leveraging company-provided resources, such as a tuition assistance program, can further clarify and expedite your career path. Short-term goals, achievable within days or months, are critical as they build momentum and make long-term goals more reachable. By aligning your personal development with organizational needs and taking advantage of available resources, you can work toward advancing your career while contributing to your company’s success.

Your professional goals and your employer’s needs to close skills gaps could be more well aligned than you think, which may give you a tremendous advantage in your career development. Two important, downloadable resources from DeVry can help to kickstart your journey:

• Our interactive Career Pathing Action Plan can help you plan your career development journey by mapping out the objectives and actions needed to meet your long-term goals.

• Our Guide to Talking to Your Manager About Career and Education provides helpful tips on when and how to get the conversation started with your manager, and a Conversation Planner Template to help you prepare for the meeting.    

At DeVry, we’re dedicated to helping busy adult learners and career-minded professionals balance their commitment to education with work, family and other aspects of their fulfillinglives. Working with you and your employer, we’re ready to be a partner in your career development journey.

Whether you know exactly where you're heading, or you're still planning your next steps, it all starts with a simple conversation. Talk with a representative and discover how you can advance your ambition at DeVry.