Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared on FlexJobs.com.
You did it! You landed your dream role. Now your job-seeking days are over — or are they?
Once you’ve landed the job, it’s easy to get absorbed in daily tasks and allow your career to stagnate.
But what happens two years later when you realize you haven’t made any forward momentum since you began? Or worse yet, what if you suddenly find yourself unemployed?
After all, countless professionals are victims of mergers, downsizing, and new leadership each year. Maintaining a job seeker’s mindset throughout your career ensures you can hit the ground running if you ever find yourself in that position.
Maintaining a Growth Mentality in Your Career
Psychologists have studied the power of mindset for decades. And Stanford University professor Carol Dweck has made a career detailing the influence of perspective. She believes we must retrain our brains to support continual growth.
How do we do that? According to Dweck, we must embrace the “passion for stretching ourselves and sticking to it.”
Leveraging your skills and growing your experience is easier than it seems at first glance. Consider the following ways you might change your mindset and career approach for more success.
1. Ask for Stretch Assignments
There’s a good chance your managers and leaders understand your role’s impact. But do you?
Ask yourself how your position supports company initiatives. If you excel at a particular task, what benefit does that bring to other teams?
Suppose for a minute that you did lose your job and were in a round of interviews. A greater understanding of how your role impacts the bigger picture ensures you present a well-rounded professional with potential.
And asking for stretch assignments that connect you with other teams is an excellent way to gain a more extensive outlook.
2. Seek Feedback
Hiring managers love asking what your managers or coworkers would say you could improve on. After all, no one is perfect.
Actively seeking feedback and acknowledging growth opportunities is a sign of professional maturity.
That sort of self-awareness is invaluable to a prospective employer. They recognize that being realistic about where you could improve means you’re more likely to accept constructive feedback and adjust.
Start considering and practicing your responses to this question now. Schedule a meeting and ask your current manager for feedback, along with a development plan.
3. Become a Lifelong Learner
What skills do you need to gain to stay fresh and competitive?
In her books, Dweck shares the value of learning the term “not yet.” Rather than judge your abilities and skills by what you don’t know, analyze what you have yet to learn.
Apply that philosophy to your career by keeping an eye on the industry landscape.
If you were job searching, what skills would you need that you don’t have yet? Would you be considering a career change? What are the qualifications you need to build because you still need them?
Rather than focus on where you’re at currently, a lifelong learner creates a routine of curiosity. That curiosity helps them stay current with industry trends, software, and best practices. Or, they might eagerly attend conferences and grow their network to embrace new knowledge.
4. Set Long-Term Goals
Where do you see yourself in five years? You’ve probably been asked that during every single interview.
Long-term goals can help you stay engaged in your current role and work in a continual cycle of planning, prioritizing, and adjusting.
Hiring managers recognize the intrinsic value of momentum and the ability to break goals down into manageable tasks. Getting comfortable with your long-term goals ensures you can adjust course when needed and persevere at others.
With long-term goals, you’ll avoid complacency and continually update your career options. You’ll also have an updated skill set should you find yourself in an unexpected job search.
5. Network Consistently
The most powerful tool in your job search is often your network. But if you wait until you need one, you won’t harness the full potential of a robust network.
Instead, approach your networking tasks with the understanding that it might be the difference between extended unemployment and landing on your feet quickly.
Because here’s the thing, a healthy network requires consistent habits. Build a routine into your professional work schedule that includes networking tasks.
How to Tackle Networking
Start by creating a list of everyone you know and want to maintain professional contact with.
Then, create a second list of professionals you don’t know yet but admire. They might be executives that followed a similar career path, leaders who work for companies you admire, or other professionals with skills you need to develop.
Once you’re armed with your lists, you can hone your networking skills. That might mean mastering conversation starters or making more impactful and relevant posts in your LinkedIn group. For many of us, it means stepping outside our comfort zones and attending in-person events.
Whatever the case, those efforts will pay off when you need to lean on your network.
Maintaining a Job Seeker’s Mentality
Working with a job seeker’s mentality can help you get back to work as quickly as possible if you are suddenly unemployed. But those same traits also set you up for success in your current role.
Exceptional networking, long-term goal-setting, a big-picture perspective, and constant learning are all traits of successful leaders. So, keep your job seeker’s hat on to ensure you’re approaching your career with a growth mindset.
