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jobs that offer good career progression

When it comes to your work life, there’s one thing that should always be on your mind; progression. Are you in a job that allows you to progress to a new level, or will you be stuck in the mud the whole time? What I mean is; will you be able to gain promotions and end up with jobs that pay better, or is your career doomed to stay in the same place for eternity?

In an ideal world, you want a job that offers excellent career progression. This is one of the key things people look for in job satisfaction; it’s nice to know that there’s always somewhere new to go; another level to reach. Progression rewards you for hard work, so there’s always motivation to try hard and succeed at everything you do. This is what gets you out of bed every Monday morning and encourages you to be productive. You find that people with jobs that offer progression are happier than those in ones that don’t.

So, the question is - does your job currently offer good enough progression? If you’ve been working for the same company for years - and you feel you’ve been relatively successful and worked hard - but you’ve never been offered a promotion or the chance to move up the ladder, then it offers no progression. As such, it might be worth finding a new job where you have more chance of moving on to bigger and better things.

Keeping all of this in mind, the rest of this article will focus on jobs that DO offer excellent career progression. Here are a few that you may like the look of:

Engineer

Engineering jobs are already great as they tend to be pretty well-paid and very rewarding. This type of job can vary depending on what type of engineer you are. But, that in itself is already a sign of progression. For example, you could study a basic engineering degree, then get a job as a civil engineer. Then, if you wanted to advance your career, you could specialize in a particular field - like aerospace engineering! This opens the door to more important jobs with better paygrades.

Your job as an engineer varies depending on your field, but the gist is that you help figure out how things work. You’re in charge of helping with the design of various items and ensuring everything runs efficiently with no faults. Now, the beauty of engineering jobs is that there’s always a direct line of progression, no matter who you work for or what you’re working on. There are engineers, then there are engineer managers. These are people in charge of a team of engineers who often delegate responsibilities to everyone and keep tabs on projects. It’s a very high-paying job, and you mainly just need to take an online engineering management program to become qualified. It’s brilliant as you know there’s this type of role above you to aim for. So, there’s always something worth working towards, which means every day is more worthwhile. What’s more, companies are more likely to hire engineer management staff from within, rather than hiring an outsider. This is because one of their existing engineers should already know the company well, which makes them the ideal fit for the job.

The only downside to engineering is that it’s a competitive field and you definitely need a degree to become one. So, this may mean studying hard for a few years before you’re qualified. Don’t worry if you can’t afford to get into university, there are online programs you can take as well.

Sales Assistant

This is very much an example of an entry-level career that offers excellent progression. We all know what a sales assistant is, and many of us have been one at some point. You can work for all manner of businesses, and your main aim is to just sell things to customers. The money you take home is hardly anything to scream and shout about, but that’s not the main reason you’re in this line of work.

No, it’s all about the career progression. You may start off as a sales assistant, but then you move up to a senior sales assistant, then a sales team leader, and eventually a sales manager. Each of these jobs offers more responsibilities - and more rewards. Again, companies will prefer to promote people from within, rather than going to the effort of finding new sales managers or team leaders. The best thing is, you can usually get these jobs with nothing more than good old-fashioned hard work. If you exceed sales targets every month and prove to be the best worker in your team, then you’ll eventually earn your promotions.

I like this job as it’s accessible to pretty much anyone. You rarely need any qualifications, and it’s almost impossible to run a job search without seeing results for vacant sales assistant positions!

 

Marketing Assistant

Yes, another assistant job that offers immense progression is a marketing one. When you work as a marketing assistant, you will pretty much be on the outskirts of a marketing team. It’s likely you may deal with phone calls and bookings, but you don’t have a real say in what the team does. Again, this is typically an entry-level job for someone looking to get their foot in the door.

However, the progression here can be quite surprising. It’s not unheard of to go from a marketing assistant to a member of the marketing team. Here, you will actually be working on different marketing campaigns and working with other members to get the job done. Then, you can progress to a more senior member of the team that has more responsibility and more of a say on certain decisions. Then, you can be promoted to a team leader where you are in charge of an actual team. From here, you can be promoted to the manager of the whole team, and possibly even promoted further to more executive roles in the overall company. Who knows, you may even end up managing a marketing firm!

As you can see, there is so much room to move up through the ranks when you start off as a marketing assistant. Again, much like with sales assistants, you earn this progression through hard work. Prove yourself as a valuable assistant, and they’ll want you to contribute more, which makes you part of the team, and you go from there!

Journalist

A job as a journalist is a funny one as it offers great career progression, but it’s not the easiest career to get into in the first place. There tend to be not many jobs, and a lot of interested parties looking for these roles. But, if you end up in this line of work, then you will definitely have room to improve and progress your career.

You start off at the bottom of the ladder in a very basic journalist job. Perhaps you’re working for your local newspaper or are helping to contribute to a small website. By continuously creating amazing content, you get rewarded with better opportunities. Maybe that local paper makes you an editor or gives you a more substantial role? No matter where you work, there’s always room to go up and become a senior journalist, editor, chief editor, special correspondent, and so on.

As I said, the hardest thing is getting your foot in the door to start with. One thing that can help is a degree in journalism, but you mainly need experience. Something, like writing your own blog or starting a news website, is a great way to gain experience and prove that you’re a good journalist. Then, you can get the first job and progress from there.

 

Dental Nurse

Last but not least, a job as a dental nurse can offer fantastic progression. If you don’t know, this role goes to people who assist dentists with different procedures. They’re not fully-qualified dentists, but still need a degree to do this role.

Having said that, nothing is stopping a dental nurse from progressing their career and becoming an actual dentist. To do this, they have to get the relevant degree. However, thanks to them already getting a dental nurse degree, the course to become a full-on dentist is shorter than usual.

You may think progression stops here, but you’re wrong! As a dentist, you have so many options to advance your career. This includes studying to become an orthodontist or even a facial surgeon. Plus, even if you don’t want to progress by specializing, you can still move up the ranks by becoming the senior dentist in a practice, and then actually owning a practice yourself!

There is also the more unconventional sidestep from dental nursing to actual nursing. While this requires going back into education, the great advantage anyone has in this situation is that they already have an understanding of the environment. And rather than obtaining the qualifications of an Associate Degree in Nursing up to a Master of Science in Nursing (RN to MSN programs), there is the possibility of being accepted onto part of the course due to applicable professional experience.   

These five jobs all offer excellent career progression. When you want to feel happy at work, it pays to know you’ve got the chance to keep growing and see more job opportunities. So, if you feel stuck in your current line of work, perhaps it’s time to switch to a more progressive career!