Boost your career and get a payrise!

Climbing the neverending career ladder can be a tiring ordeal. It’s like the travelator from Gladiators, making you run harder and harder without seemingly getting anywhere at all.

However, there’s no reason why it has to be so painful. With a little cunning, and your Windows Vista PC, you can get organised and earn yourself a Gordon Brown-sized pay rise. We’ve teamed up with a careers advisor from LearnDirect to find out the best ways to get that promotion, boost your pay packet, and make progress up the ladder that little bit easier.

First you need to know what you want to achieve. Look at all your options – even if you have no intention of leaving your job. You may find that the same role in rival companies is a lot better paid, and this can be used as ammunition when you go to your boss. Check vacancies at monster or The Guardian.

Unfortunately, few people are in the position of being able to go to their boss, demand a pay rise and walk out with swollen pockets. If you’re going to get that promotion or pay rise, you’re going to have to work for it, and this is where Windows Vista comes in.

Article continues

Dave Berry, careers advisor for LearnDirect, recommends you think about how you can increase your work performance. “Boosting your productivity is a great way to get noticed. Come in a little early and stay a little late, and your boss will see and appreciate that,” he says. You can use Microsoft Office 2007 to increase your productivity, and free up time for important things. That may be more work if you’re out to impress, or at least a more efficient workplan.

Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 has had a complete overhaul, making it a great place to centralise your work. It now comes equipped with the To-Do bar, which sits to the right of the screen and acts like a personal organiser.

Darren Strange, UK product manager for Microsoft Office, advises using the new tools to your advantage.“Start using the new To-Do bar in Office Outlook 2007,” he says. “Don’t let your diary push you around: take control and start blocking out time to get priority tasks done.”

When you get an email, it can be dragged to the To-Do bar. Items on the bar can then be added to your calendar, given priority flags and sent to other people just by dragging. This dramatically reduces the effort required to synchronise the different aspects of Office Outlook.

Darren also champions new developments in Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007, which he believes can help impress the boss, and get you on the fast track to promotion. “Put an end to death by PowerPoint and start to create more interesting presentations,” he recommends. “Use the new SmartArt feature to change boring bullet lists into diagrams that mean something.”

Making contact

Windows Vista is packed with features designed to make you more productive. Try using a few of these and see how your performance increases.

No one can function without email these days, and any time spent away from your inbox can lead to disaster. You could set Windows Mail to receive your work email at home, as long as your IT department (and family!) don’t mind. This means in times of crisis, you can come to the rescue while others flounder.

Alternatively, you could set up a web mail service, such as the new Windows Live Hotmail, and have your messages forwarded. Being able to pick up messages while you’re out of the office saves time, and could prove vital one day.

You can further increase your productivity by using the new Windows Sidebar feature, which makes use of the void on the righthand side of your desktop. Check out Live Gallery for thousands of Sidebar applications designed to make life easier.

There’s also the Microsoft Office Outlook gadget, which brings your inbox to your desktop. If you prefer to make your desktop the focus of your work, rather than individual programs in different windows, this saves stacks of time.

Windows Vista comes with a plethora of programs designed to increase your productivity. Eliminate wasted time looking for numbers in address books and on bits of paper by centralising your data in Windows Contacts. The Windows Contacts program feeds into a Sidebar gadget, which enables you to have your colleagues’ details within easy reach.

If your work relies on breaking news and developments, then web feeds can really help you out. Lookfor feeds on your favourite news sites and add them to Internet Explorer by clicking the orange logo in the toolbar. Any feeds you add are automatically added to Microsoft Office Outlook as well.

If you feel that you and your colleagues aren’t communicating well, or you need an easy way to share information, Windows Meeting Space could be the answer. This enables you to set up conferences where you can chat, share and edit files conveniently. It can be done over any wired or wireless local (LAN) or wide area network (WAN). If used properly, Meeting Space can really improve your department’s performance.

While Windows Vista can help increase your productivity and get you organised, sometimes you need a little extra help to get further up the career ladder. Dave Berry constantly deals with people who are struggling to break through the promotion barrier into their next job. “People often get in touch because they feel unable to move on,” he says. “They may have been in that role for a long time and need some extra training, perhaps with IT, for example,” he says.

LearnDirect offers hundreds of courses, in most areas of business, which you can complete in your own time and on your own terms. Log on to Learn Direct to see how you can expand your portfolio and work towards that illustrious promotion. “Occasionally people lack experience when they have to move to management or customer-facing roles,” says Dave. “There’s a great site – www.volunteering.org.uk – that hooks people up with organisations looking for workers.”

Foot in the door

If experience is all you’re lacking, this can be a frustrating barrier to you reaching the upper echelons of your profession. Voluntary work is not only great experience, but rewarding as well. Another site, Do It, has extensive lists of vacancies.

If you’re serious about getting a promotion, it’s a good idea to think about the skills you currently use and could bring to another role. “People often take their skills for granted,” says Dave. “It’s easy to say ‘I’m just a sales assistant’, for example, without thinking of the vast number of skills this requires. Play to your strengths and give yourself credit for what you do. In every job there are loads of transferable skills that you can take to bigger and better roles.”

Dave advises you to make a skills’ inventory to help you identify your unique selling points. This can be done simply in Microsoft Office by making a spreadsheet or document listing all the skills you have to offer. This can help you to convince your boss you have the ability to work at higher levels of responsibility, or that you’re worth that pay rise you’ve been looking for.

If you have to apply for your promotion formally, you may have to update your CV. With a little work, you can really sell yourself. Try using Microsoft Office Word 2007 to redesign it, making sure it’s clearly laid out. Don’t be afraid to leave white space, which will make it much easier on the eye, and use contrasting bold fonts on section headings.

While Office Word 2007 empowers you to express yourself however you like, don’t be tempted to include flowery borders or the cardinal sin, clip art. Keep your CV simple, and make sure you fill it with details of the skills you’ve obtained from every job.

With a good CV you’ll be able to make it to an interview, and that promotion will finally be in sight. Interviews are a nerve-racking time, and if you haven’t had one in a while, you could be unprepared. Make sure you think about the skills you identified in your CV, and think of real-life situations when you’ve used them. Employers will always ask you to give examples, so don’t suffer from an attack of the blank mind.

It’s also important in an interview to show you’ve done some background research on both the company and what the role entails – make a start at Hoovers, which holds profiles and information about thousands of UK companies. During the interview, also remember to ask questions, and show that you’re keen on the job.

LearnDirect offers loads of advice on different areas of the job application process on a special section of its web site. Log on to Learn Direct Advice to see what you can do to boost your chances.

With a little help and knowhow, it’s not too hard to get that promotion or pay rise, and turn the career ladder into a money escalator. Good luck!