Pro-tips exist to help you stand out. One easy way to stand out from your peers is to study the top literature in your field on your own time and, if needed, your own dime. I would be at least 95% of your competition will not do the same.
On the job training- of course, this is a major part of your work. If you are new, I would not turn down extra work with people who have different backgrounds. When I was hired, I worked with an electrician, a former draftsman, a licensed engineer, an un-licensed engineer who was a master of drives, a few telecom guys and a guy who had run an electronics repair business. Everyone found different things to teach me. They helped make me into who I am today.
However, I would never have got there without working before that as a part-time automation guy as a small machine shop, which I would never had got without taking a job in prototyping at an instrumentation shop. That would not have happened without me doing an internship and reading an ancient book called Methods in Organic Analysis, which brings me to my next point...
Reading. All are taught in school, but one thing that is not taught is how to stand out as knowledgeable amongst your peers. If you read scholarly articles and work in an R&D position, great. However, if you get a new job, I strongly recommend giving yourself a significant budget for reading. (Do not buy them until you are hired.) Buy 6-10 high-end professional books in your field. Wiley is expensive but good, you will not go wrong with them.
I will give you two examples. First was my own experience in a research lab. I was assigned to find a test for bio-diesel in normal diesel fuel. I came up with two ideas and took one straight out of Methods in Organic Analysis. My boss was immediately impressed and had me use the one from the book. He was blown away when I used a liquid-liquid extraction and brought the minimum concentration down three orders of magnitude.
The second example is that of a family member, who had trouble getting a job here. (Visas are a pain.) She finally got a job as technical support for a device she was not experienced with. I picked out 6-10 books with her from Wiley, bought them all on the condition she would read them every night until completed. She went from being the newest person in her team to her company's subject matter expert in less than eighteen months.
The books we are talking about are all dry and written by professionals who never really make money off of them. However, you can certainly make money off of them.
Find books related to licensing for your coworkers. If you work with electricians but are not one, pick up the study guides for their journeyman's exam. Same for engineers or telecom. These will reveal how they think and what they are looking for, that you miss.
Read your manuals. In addition to books, spend some time on your lunch breaks reading through your operation and maintenance manuals, or software manuals. The O&M manuals will hint at capabilities your newer operators may not know and your senior operators may not have covered. Often software will allow you to import/export tags and logic in spreadsheets, saving you from errors while typing.
Spreadsheets, VBA and Python
If you learn how to do spreadsheets well and can implement even slightly complex macros, people will look at you differently. You can often be seen as a type of magician, as so many tasks are routine and feasible.
If you are doing on-off tasks, try using Python. Anaconda will help with your installation on Windows and, after that, just use Juypter Notebooks (which I always misspell.)
Online training- There are lots of great online classes out there. YouTube is great for one-off tasks, but Udemy is my favorite for more in-depth classes. If you are trying to learn while renewing license credentials in the USA, I recommend RedVector.
Keep up the good work!
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