Market Yourself like a start-up!

These days, thinking of your career solely in terms of duties, tasks and even promotions is outdated, firmly inside the box and not really beneficial to providing the most bang for your proverbial buck.

Think of how Amazon operates. They market their products; they ship products, hire people. They don’t have the time to consider one task, complete said task before operating in another area and neither do you! Go with what works and adapt your philosophy for your job search.

1^st - YOU are the company and here are a couple of ways to Plan your career:

·         Marketing YOU: Focused and specific numbers driven content extolling your achievements should be the rule not the exception and rid yourself of empty statements such as “Exceptional communication skills, written and verbal.” Think about where you can best market yourself to maximize your exposure, to offer advice and trumpet YOU, show don’t tell them how great you are.

·         Think long and short-term strategy: Where can I be and how can I get there in the next year? What does success look like and how can I achieve it in the next months, year, five years? There are all sorts of blogs telling you what to do but until YOU determine your specific goal, you’ll need a compass to find the way.

·         Constantly be innovating: How can YOU improve a process at work? Start thinking in terms of solutions and not merely the problem.  If a department is underperforming, try and figure out the root cause instead of focusing on the easy answer that it must be training.

2^nd - Tying your goals to an organization that may be moving on without you is a great way to get left behind.

·         This doesn’t mean your only option is to start your own company

·         It doesn’t mean strictly chasing the almighty dollar

·         It does mean setting goals for individual achievement aligned with corporate achievement such as:

o   Managing your accounts so that you minimize fee payouts

o   Increasing sales on a quarterly basis

o   Decreasing lost department production by 5, 10, 15%

o   Finding ways to save the company money

3^rd – Begin to think in terms of achievement. Move past believing you are “doing your job” and find the accomplishments in your daily, weekly and annual work:

·         Service level goals if in customer service: 90% of calls answered in 20 seconds or less for 3 consecutive quarters.

·         Amount of client contacts you’re making daily, weekly, monthly

Figuring out what you want can help determine your career next steps. Figuring that out and marketing that in multiple areas can lead to achieving the success you want, at least getting on the proper path.

Daryl M Williams, MBA, M.S., is an adjunct professor, teaching Organizational Development, Change Management, HR, Career Planning and Management as well as a Higher Education and Contact Center Manager and Career Coach. He is passionate about providing information to assist friends, family, students and alum in professional development and uses his management experience in Fortune 500, non-profit and private corporations to inform his decisions. Feel free to connect via LinkedIn.