New Year, New Goals: How to Level Up Your Trade Career in 2026

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Start 2026 with Your Career Moving Forward

A new year is the perfect time to set new goals — especially for your trade career. Whether you’re a seasoned tradie or still building your experience, the start of 2026 is your chance to move up, get recognised, and earn more.

With Gimbal Group’s Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) pathways and trade qualifications, you can turn your experience into formal recognition without losing time on the job.

Why Set Career Goals as a Tradie?

Tradies are in high demand across Australia, but having a qualification behind your name gives you a major edge.
By setting goals now, you can:

  • Boost your pay and job opportunities
  • Qualify for bigger contracts and projects
  • Meet licensing and compliance requirements
  • Future-proof your trade career
  • Open doors to supervision or management roles

The great part? You don’t need to go back to school full-time to do it.

Turn Experience into Qualifications with RPL

If you’ve been working in your trade for years, RPL Australia lets you use your existing experience to gain a nationally recognised qualification.
Through a simple RPL assessment, your on-site knowledge, references, photos, and work history can be mapped to a qualification standard — saving you time and cost.

It’s perfect for:

  • Skilled workers who never finished their apprenticeship
  • Migrants needing formal recognition for licensing or visa purposes
  • Self-employed tradies who want to become QBCC-qualified

Trade Qualifications You Can Earn Through RPL

Gimbal Group offers a wide range of qualifications to match your skills and experience, including:

All of these qualifications can be achieved faster through Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) or traditional apprenticeship pathways.

How to Set Your 2026 Career Plan

Here’s a simple framework to get started:

  1. Review Your Current Skills – What are you already good at?
  2. Identify What’s Missing – Do you need formal recognition, licensing, or advanced training?
  3. Choose Your Qualification – Pick the trade qualification that fits your experience.
  4. Start the RPL Process – Gimbal Group will guide you through your assessment from start to finish.

By the time 2026 is in full swing, you could already be holding your new qualification and earning more.

Start the Year with Gimbal Group

You’ve done the hard work — now it’s time to get recognised for it.
At Gimbal Group, we help tradies across Australia gain nationally recognised trade qualifications through RPL Australia and apprenticeship pathways.

👉 Start Your RPL Assessment Today and make 2026 the year you level up your career.

If you have a questions, please contact us.

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