It’s a bad habit to fall into, working harder instead of smarter, but many women find themselves overwhelmed at work because of it.
If you are taking on extra projects and responsibilities in an effort to advance your career, you are falling into the “harder” category, and you are likely hurting your chances for promotion rather than helping them.
“Take nothing else away from this article but this one thing: In today’s market, companies (right or wrong) are looking for the kings and queens in their field, not the jack of all trades”.
When you consistently say yes to every project and take on the “chores” that no one else wants to deal with, you are not impressing people with your subject matter expertise or positioning yourself for a promotion; in fact, you are diluting your personal brand and setting yourself up for burnout.
Take the time to consider the work that you truly love to do and excel at, and proactively seek out or initiate projects that fit within that body of work. Doing the work you love will energize you, and increase your career visibility while you do it.
New career advancement programs from Competitive Edge Career Services are in the final stages of development, but I don’t want to wait to start sharing some of my new content with you! Here is a tip that you can use when opportunity knocks to turn up the dial on your Career Visibility.
Be selective in the Boardroom and use your personal brand as a ruler to help you determine which opportunities are on brand and which ones are not. If you volunteer to lead projects just because you can, or to impress the boss, you could actually be making yourself less visible, and inviting burn out.
Career visibility means recognizing and being recognized for what makes you unique. Don’t create confusion about what you stand for, or additional responsibility to your plate without purpose.
Instead, increase your career visibility by leading (or better yet, initiating) projects that align with your passions and also add measurable value to the organization. If you are genuinely engaged and energized by the task ahead of you, you will show up in ways that you never could through work ethic alone, and it won’t even feel like work!
Many of you have noticed and commented on how quiet things have been on the blog lately. I’m happy to say that I’m back from a virtual retreat where I have been taking time to work on a solution to an issue that I have been hearing more and more about lately.
It began with my clients telling me that they want to have more tools in their tool kit to increase their career visibility. It was compounded by hearing professionally accredited women tell me that they feel overlooked and undervalued in their organizations. They feel stuck and not taken seriously by hiring managers.
I know that many women can relate and I am excited to say that I am designing a simple suite of personal branding solutions for increasing your career visibility and empowering you to reach the pinnacle of your professional goals.
There is a big shift happening in the corporate world where women with professional accreditation want to advance their careers without “one-upping” their similarly accredited peers, or burning themselves out in the process.
I am proud to be taking Competitive Edge Career Services to a new level to meet the needs of these women who as leaders, influence other women and girls in their career choices.
I invite you to stay tuned for updates and announcements in the coming days and weeks, and to share these posts with women in your network who can relate to feeling invisible in the workplace.
I am very excited to announce that I have been certified by Reach as an Online Identity Strategist. This means that I am equipped with the very latest techniques and resources to make careerists in their prime stand out from their competition and advance to leadership positions.
After 5 weeks of intensive work, I am preparing a new dimension of personal branding services offered by Competitive Edge Career Services that will sharpen clients’ competitive edge by increasing their visibility and credibility. I call it Personal Branding On Demand, and you will be hearing more about this in mid-April as my company expands existing service packages and launches new ones.
There is a great deal being said about reputation management of late, and today a new site was launched (in beta only) called “Unvarnished” which has been described as the meeting point of Linkedin and Yelp, where the good, the bad, and the ugly comments about you can be posted. Here is an interesting article on TechCrunch that includes screenshots from the site and an interview with one of the founders.
For another take, check out Mitch Joel’s recent blog post and his call to drop “online” from reputation management and consider that your reputation is your reputation, regardless of whether it is online or off.
It’s true that employers are going to Google you as a candidate, and this is important, but what really made me sit up and think about my online identity was Gary Vaynerchuck’s comment that what we put online about ourselves now will be available to our grandchildren, great grandchildren, and so on…What do you want them to know about you?
Gary Vaynerchuk (WARNING: language may be offensive to some viewers), entrepreneur and owner of Wine Library TV speaks at Web 2.0 Expo in NY about doing what you love, building Personal Brand Equity, and taking social media from monitoring your target audience to caring about them.
What I love about Gary’s presentation is how he expresses his own passionate Personal Brand, and that he hits the nail on the head about how to monetize the things that you love – you have to work at it.
There are no magic wands for getting what you want out of life. All the so-called “secrets of success” will not work unless you do.
Don’t miss the short but powerful Q&A at the end. Comments welcome!
Along with over 900 other people I attended a function last week with Gordon Campbell, the Premier of BC and recent global face of the hugely successful 2010 Winter Olympics. Premier Campbell is a great speaker who truly engages his audience and I was particularly impressed with his ability to laugh at himself and show that he is human too.
At one point he jokingly talked about one of his Ministers making a “career limiting move” and it got me thinking. We all recognize that term and avoid making the kinds of mistakes that can shorten the life-span of our jobs, both in public and in private. We are on the look-out for them and put energy into avoiding them.
It made me realize that Personal Branding is the mirror image of career limiting moves, and instead of waiting for the sky to potentially fall and praying that it won’t, Personal Branding can prop it up on a daily basis.
Think of this: if just by avoiding a career cataclysm you can count yourself as successful, how much more successful will you be if you go a little bit out of your way every day to bullet-proof your career by expressing a strong Personal Brand?
Here are 3 ways that you can shift your sky watching Chicken Little career outlook to a Road Runner bullet-proof Personal Branding strategy:
Build a professional reputation based on high performance. Consistently show up and stand out for what you love to do. Add value to your organization using your personal strengths.
Be fearless about what you stand for. Use your Personal Brand as a litmus test to determine actions and associations that are, and are not, “on brand” for you. Trust that when the answer is “on brand”, it is the right action to take and go for it.
Don’t give in to mass hysteria! With the economic climate still fluctuating, rumours abound and it is tempting to go into panic. Remain grounded in your Personal Brand and faithful to your personal values, vision, passion and purpose. It will help you to stay visible within your organization and maintain a professional reputation that can weather tough times and come out on top.
This just happened before my very eyes: my 5-year old daughter came home from school and brought out her latest Scholastic Book Order form. She is in Kindergarten and loves books but is not a reader yet. The routine is for her to go through the Book Order and circle the books that look interesting to her. Then we go through it together, I read the titles and descriptions, and we decide which books to order.
So there I was, minding my own business when she shouts out, “Melanie Watt!”
Melanie Watt is a Canadian children’s book author who wrote two hilarious picture books about a cat named Chester. In the books, the character of Chester tries to take over as author and illustrator using his red marker. He duels with Melanie, even defaces her pictures and ridicules her. Melanie wins out in the end.
Now here’s the thing. The book in the Book Order was NOT for a Chester book. It was for another of Melanie’s book series, Scaredy Squirrel. The Book Order listing included a small cropped headshot of Melanie in the corner, different from the ones defaced by Chester and a 5 year old instantly recognized her, knew her name, and knew that the Scaredy Squirrel books would be funny.
Wow. There you have it. If a 5-year old can recognize a personal brand, understand what it means, and make a selection based on that understanding, then that is a strong personal brand.
Personal branding means knowing what makes you unique, being easily identified by your target audience, and consistently expressing what makes you stand out.
Having a selection of headshots that consistently express your brand is a great way to create brand recognition with your target audience. A few words on headshots to get you started:
Get them shot by a professional and have a selection to choose from including situational shots, i.e. if you are a speaker stand at a podium, if you are a facilitator be in a meeting, if you are in IT sit at a computer, etc.
Have your photographer do some shots with a white background so that you can easily use your image on a variety of backgrounds.
Although you will need at least one traditional headshot, try integrating elements of your brand identity into your pictures by wearing your brand color in some form, using your signature textures as part of your clothing or a prop, or helping your target audience identify with the background you choose.
Spend at least an hour with a photographer and then take some time to select the shots that express Brand You.
A good headshot can help you to be visible to the people you want to know about you, and help them to understand what you stand for.
I thought the stereotypes were dead. They aren’t. A quick surf of the internet proved that to me today.
I read message board after message board filled with ideas for how to get ahead in your career that included such tehniques as sucking up to the boss, being the first into the office and last out, working weekends, bringing goodies and coffee to higher-ups, keeping your mouth shut, and the list just got worse from there.
Advancing your career within your workplace is not something you can achieve with empty gestures and spin. Organizations do not need employees who simply spout the party line when asked for their ideas, and they don’t promote you for bringing everyone coffee or remembering the boss’s birthday.
Besides, faking it all the time sounds like a lot of work to me. I would rather take it easy and focus on doing what I love and being my authentic self. It’s easier to keep track of !
So at the risk of throwing a great many posers off of their game, here are 3 tips for advancing your career in your workplace that don’t require you to sell your soul to get ahead:
Do a good job: Perform all the duties of your position at as high a level as possible so that you are thinking like a CEO and owning the work you do. Employees who put their heart into their work and are accountable get promoted.
Know your strengths: It’s the new world of work, so you can stop putting all your energy into “fixing” your weaknesses and start putting all your energy into doing what you do well. Organizations want individuals and individual talent so inventory your strengths and use what you’ve got to really shine. Employees who help the company meet its objectives using their natural abilities get promoted.
Don’t ignore your internal clients:
Having an attitude of service towards your co-workers, counterparts and colleagues is as important as the one you have for your clients. Find out more about how you can lend your strengths to their projects, get to know how their work fits into the organization. Build your internal network and do what you can to help them. Employees with a reputation for service and strong organizational perspective get promoted.
BOTTOM LINE: work hard, know yourself, help others, and do it all with authenticity.
So just relax and be your best authentic self at work. It’s the jet fuel for your rise to the top!
The career ladder is the most common metaphor for career progression but I want you to forget about it. It’s an outdated model for a career by default instead of by design, prompting you to only take action when there is seismic change in your career. This steep stop-and-start approach grows your career sporadically at best and relegates it to the back burner the rest of the time, out of everyone’s sight and mind.
I want you to see that your career is not a ladder, it’s a ramp. A gradual and constant building that moves gradually ahead, constantly expressing your personal brand. By consistently working to expand your reputation, you stand out by standing for something, and you will be visible to recruiters inside and outside your organization, attracting the opportunities that you want to attract.
If you want to have the ability to design career success on your terms, then start thinking of your career progression as a ramp and make regular contributions to ensuring that your career builds momentum instead of following the stop-and-start approach.
Here are 3 easy ways to start building your ramp:
Develop your self-awareness. A great way to start is with a free 15 day Personal Brand Assessment (click here to get started). Set and refine your career goals, take an inventory of your accomplishments, and pay closer attention to the things that come easily and energize you.
Build your network. Build and maintain contacts with people who are going to help you to achieve your goals, and who have goals that you want to help achieve. This is important for developing the contacts you will call on to provide references.
Start researching your ideal employers, the people you most want to work with, and map out where your personal brand, your strengths, and your accomplishments intersect with those employers’ mission, values, and goals. One of my favourite Canadian search engines is www.eluta.ca which also lists information about Canada’s Top Employers, for jobs across North America check out www.monster.com, www.careerbuilder.com , and www.indeed.com .
Keep moving forward and exploring what makes you unique, because what makes you unique, makes you stand out!
I was listening to a discussion a couple of days ago on the news regarding the Vancouver Winter Olympics coverage. Some networks were providing a prime time distillation of pre-recording highlights, whereas others are providing total coverage of every event streaming live online, and on demand. Of course, being me, I immediately thought about Branding.
This is a great illustration of the difference between average careerists, those who submit cover letters and resumes to the appropriate contact person and wait for a response, and above average careerists with strong personal brand strategies who have a much more pervasive presence, and proactive approach to their careers.
In our 2.0 world, strong brands get their message across consistently and clearly, in multiple formats, in multiple places, and are always available on demand. When a recruiter goes looking for more than just what is on the 2 or 3 pieces of paper you have submitted, and almost all of them do, will they find You On Demand?
Bear in mind that the networks offering live streaming coverage of the Olympics did not put this together the day before the Games began, neither did they suddenly shift to offering 24/7 video coverage after a long history of offering only in-depth under-cover reports. They had a strategy in place to ensure that they were accessible to their target audience, and that their target audience found content and a format that was authentic and consistent with the network’s brand.
So how does that relate to you? Consider what would happen if you were to apply for your dream job, where your competition has essentially identical credentials and experience to yours. Would it set you apart if your background check revealed that you had a blog where you wrote about topics valuable to the company or position, which was further supplemented by video, photos, book reviews, articles, blog comments, responses to questions, and more, all demonstrating your unique promise of value over a period of time? Now consider that your dream job has anything at all to do with your ability to communicate, which covers 99.9% of jobs in North America.
Would You On Demand give you a competitive edge over a prime time distillation of prerecorded highlights? Well, who would you hire?
It’s a bad habit to fall into, working harder instead of smarter, but many women find themselves overwhelmed at work because of it.
virtual retreat where I have been taking time to work on a solution to an issue that I have been hearing more and more about lately.