Career Lessons Most Women Learn Too Late

A lot of career advice centers around debating the best format for things like your LinkedIn profile, resume, or cover letters. There are countless templates and formulas and arguments for why visual presentation matters and how to achieve the most effective version for your career goals. But other equally as important career lessons don’t get mentioned until much too late.  

Things like networking, advocating for yourself, building relationships outside your immediate team, and understanding that your reputation can sometimes open more doors than a perfectly formatted resume ever will. These are some of the career lessons I wish more people talked about earlier in your career.

Networking and why you need to do it 
Networking is often stressed as an important aspect of career growth and opportunity without clarifying the reasoning behind why. A career lesson that is often learned too late is that having visibility with the right connections often equals access to opportunities for growth, learning, or relationships you wouldn’t have otherwise. According to Forbes, Up to 70% to 80% of open positions are never published publicly on job boards. Companies often fill these roles through internal movement, word-of-mouth, or direct referrals.  

Always make time to meet with your other co-workers and department heads internally outside of your own department/role. Go to the optional lunch. Take the coffee chat. Introduce yourself to someone whose work interests you. The goal here is to build relationships before you need them. 

Good work doesn’t speak for Itself, share your wins 
Singing your own praises can feel boastful at best, or cringey at worst but an important career lesson is to be your own hype person and advocate in the workplace. If a campaign exceeded expectations, a piece of content is blowing up, a rebrand wowed board members, or a new partnership/ collaboration opportunity grew from your nurturing efforts, or a client gave you an overwhelmingly raving review:  you have to be the one to share those wins in the company slack channel, weekly team meetings, or quarterly all-staff meetings. 

Bringing visibility to the work helps the work get seen, but it also helps your contribution to the work get seen. Sharing your wins ahead of annual performance reviews will always work in your favor. Having a folder or document where you track your “work wins” is also a good reference point to have for days when the work is harder, or mistakes are made. It can be easy to remember every mistake you've made and forget all of the things you've done well. Keep the receipts.

Never underestimate the value of your personal brand 
A personal brand builds trust and credibility ( what you are known for), but it is also what can make you memorable and stand out. Are you the person who's always sharing those clever and creative carousels on LinkedIn? Or whose writing that best-selling Substack? Or who made that intro video that feels more like cinematography? Or who volunteers and takes amazing photos? This is the place to really let your personality and personal interests or hobbies shine! While there should be some connection to your workplace, industry or tasks, this doesn’t have to be a copy/paste of your resume but rather an extension of it. 

Your relationships don’t have to end when you leave a job 
Your co-workers are not just your co-workers. They can also be become mentors, friends, future clients, or people who recommend you for opportunities years after you've worked together. Connect with people on LinkedIn (or whatever social platform where they are most active). Send the occasional "thinking of you" message. Congratulate former coworkers when they get promoted. Recommend someone when they've done good work. The important thing here is to not wait to reconnect until you need a favor. And you don’t have to maintain hundreds of relationships. A handful of genuine professional relationships is more valuable than a massive network of people you've never actually spoken to.

Your resume is only one part of the bigger picture 
We spend so much time talking about resume formats, LinkedIn profiles, portfolios, cover letters, personal websites, keywords, formatting, and whether we're presenting ourselves the "right" way. These things matter. But they are just a piece of the bigger picture. 

Your career is also being shaped by the people you meet, the work you do (paid and unpaid), the reputation you build, the things you're known for, and whether people actually know what you're capable of. A perfectly formatted resume could get your foot in the door. But there is a lot that happens before and after someone ever sees it.

Being good at your job is just one aspect of career growth.It's also about making sure people know what you bring to the table, building genuine relationships, and being intentional about the reputation you're building along the way.

Written by Hannah Lacy
Hannah Lacy is a digital content strategist with over seven years of experience in marketing and social media, and more than a decade of experience as a freelance writer contributing to various publications. A working mother of two school-aged children, she writes at the intersection of ambition and parenthood, with a passion for storytelling, advocating for working moms, and partnering with mission-driven brands and organisations.