What is the importance in maintaining professional competence?

Your competence is what interests your present or future employers. Do not build your career on too narrow competence. Keep an eye on what happens in your field of technology to prepare in advance for changes.

Learn to live with uncertainty. It is very difficult to know for certain today what kind of competence will be useful five years from now.

Do not forget that in addition to your technical competence, other types of skills and knowledge are also important in the working life. Learn about the world, society and people – that will make a more well-rounded person. In the working life, successful completion of tasks often requires a multidisciplinary approach.

Examples of useful skills:

Age is not an obstacle. You are never too old to start to learn. Learning can be hard work – at any age - because learning is not just doing, listening or reading. Learning requires thinking and processing what you have done or read. People like to process things in a different way. Someone reflects best alone. Another one else likes to have a lively group discussion. A third person gets a clearer picture and deeper understanding through writing or drawing mind maps.

Sharing experience and knowledge with your colleagues is an important way of learning. It is also often a requirement since many projects are complicated and multi-faceted – impossible for just one person to manage.

SOME WAYS TO DEVELOP YOUR COMPETENCE

Find how you can develop your competence to keep employers interested in you. Below there are some ways.

WRITE DOWN YOUR PLANS AND COMMIT TO THEM.

Writing down your plans and thoughts is a helpful tool when you are making your professional development plans. Pace yourself! You can move forward even by taking small steps. Concrete plans make it easier to take the important first step.Write your action plan. Utilise the possibilities for on-the-job-learning that your employer offers. If you want to participate in long training programs, make sure you make a realistic time schedule for your studies.

I want to develop my technical competence in the following ways by (MONTH/YEAR):

I want to develop my non-technical competence in the following ways by (MONTH/YEAR):

I want to develop my people skills and working skills in following ways by (MONTH/YEAR):

Developing and maintaining professional competence is a critical factor for career advancement. There are various ways of improving one’s skills and expertise. Among them is implementing constant self-assessment and getting feedback from colleagues, managers, and customers. It is especially important for those sectors and industries that are highly relying on soft skills, such as the ability to communicate positively with clients and managing stressful situations.

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My career is connected to hospitality management and mainly deals with administrative tasks. Currently involved in the aforementioned field, I am determined to advance in my career and one day become a front office manager with a possibility to be promoted to the position of a hotel general manager. However, to do this, I need to continually work on my competencies and skills and excel in my current responsibilities, including booking reservations, taking guest requests, addressing issues and complaints, and ensuring customer satisfaction. Therefore, I try to develop my communication skills, improve my organizational abilities, and learn about new technologies and best practices.

Moreover, it is always helpful for me to learn from my manager and colleagues. I learn from my three co-employees by asking direct questions if I find myself in some unfamiliar situation and have no time to evaluate all the details on my own. Furthermore, the front desk personnel get regular feedback from the manager responsible for all operations, including front desk issues. Finally, the most challenging and valuable learning experience comes from the hotel’s guests, whose feedback can be either extremely positive or negative. However, it is essential to analyze the customer’s reactions and turn them into a constructive evaluation of your performance that you can improve to become a better specialist.

While attending a Leadership course, we were given a task to present the important of maintaining our professional competence, and it make me realized that we may have focused so much on technical skills, key proficiencies but may have missed out professional or personal competencies.

Changes are unavoidable, and Changes Are Permanent. With globalization and digital technologies, we need to embrace the changes, and we must continue to be Inspire, be Creative, Do Things Differently, and leap on a Learning Journey to keep up with our professional competencies so that we continue to stay employable.

There are many ways to improve our competencies, let me share some tips:

1. Understand and reflect yourself, identify the gaps that you want to improve. And if you are unable to do that, engage with a career coach to guide you. Once you know what you need, go for the relevant upgrade, it is never too late to learn, the SKY is the LIMIT, give it a shot!
2. Keep in touch with the newer technologies that eventually may disrupt the ways we run our businesses. Do your research on the subject matters, attend seminars, workshops to hear what the experts shared. Browse the Internet, read publications, and you will be surprise that there are Beauties in Everything you read! From self reading, you are able to capture the knowledge and help keep pace with the latest happening. No one is going to take that away from you, as it will always be store in your brain.
3. Practices, practices, practices - the concept of Formula One, where drivers are given 3 practices session before they head into the qualifying and the main race. You need to be Courageous, and Dare to Try. Always try your Best in whatever you do. You can practices in front of your family, your peers, via video, and gather your feedback. Assess yourself through these feedback and look into the areas for improvement.
4. Network with people, e.g. using LinkedIn. Not only you need to set up an account, you need to update your profile, summary of yourself, career history, accomplishments, etc.. Insert a picture of yourself - please do not use your holiday picture or group photo, you need to have a picture just yourself only, and with proper dress-code. Be active in LinkedIn by LIKE or COMMENT in a articles or post (just like this one!). You can also endorse others and make yourself visible to your connections. It is a long way in promoting yourself. You can also write articles of your favorite topic. By having 1000 connections, LinkedIn can escalate you to a wider connection to various people, by linking up the 2nd of your 1st connections.

In summary, let's Honor our Commitment to improve our professional competency, Always be Hungry to want more and stay ahead of the competitions.

If we do not maintain our professional competence, we may ended up like a SPONGE - compressed, dejected and disposed. We definitely want to be a SPRING, ability to bounce back when you are down. Ultimately our goals is to improve ourselves and our aim is to WORK SMART and PLAY HARD!

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