Being Noticed and PROMOTED
Working hard and being good in your role are important aspects of your job. But this is never enough!
If you want to get ahead, gain promotion and achieve greater career success you need a strong profile and high visibility with senior management.
They need to be familiar with your current strengths, talents and organisational accomplishments. You need to empower and manage an army of informed advocates. They need to be able to discuss your performance with a broad range of targeted people, internally and externally. You must equip them to confirm your expertise and knowledge.
So, if you are determined to get ahead, how well do your senior managers know you and how much time do you invest in raising your profile and visibility?
To assist in this process here are 3 ways to strengthen your profile and increase your visibility within your organisation and industry.
Understand Other Business Areas
Do you know what happens in other areas of the business?
Taking the initiative to find out about other functions, the systems used and how these interfaces with other parts of the company, including the difficulties and opportunities they experience can prove invaluable. Not only does it expand your appreciation and understanding of your organisation it offers an opportunity to raise your profile, expand your network and identify possible future roles.
Therefore, invest time in learning more about your organisation, its business, services and / or products and people. Widen this investigation to learn about future trends, developments and your competition enabling you to determine whether they provide future career development opportunities.
Leverage your LI Profile
Savvy careerists know that to get ahead they need to invest time and resources into building a strong LI profile.
This includes:
- A current professional headshot; vital if you want to be easily recognised and to help develop your brand.
- Supported with clear, concise and up to date text summarising your accomplishments and highlighting your experience.
- Evidence of regular interaction within your network demonstrating your expertise and knowledge of industry and business concerns.
- And finally, recent testimonials recommending your work and performance; further cementing the value in your credentials and achievements.
These simple actions, performed on a frequent basis, will not only enhance your visibility to your existing connections and their network, it will raise your profile to other senior managers within your company. And potentially those outside your current employer!
Build Connections
Face to face communication remains a highly effective and critical way to build strong relationships. Where possible seek to meet up with new contacts to develop greater affinity and identify mutual areas of commonality in order to build a bond and establish trust. As a result, and with time, you will develop a highly reciprocal and beneficial relationship whilst growing your network.
The key to networking is simple. It requires a strategy. Clearly defined, prepared and executed.
Knowing why are you seeking an introduction is vital? Be specific in what assistance you need; is it to improve your profile, acquire information to resolve a dilemma or assistance in connecting with a hiring senior manager? Or it is simply to strengthen and extend your work community.
Preparation before the meeting will ensure you maximise your time and gain the most from the engagement with the new contact. This means knowing yourself; strengths, areas for development, career aspirations and expectations from the meeting. It also requires consideration of the questions you may be asked or would like to ask.
Whatever your networking reason always express your gratitude and appreciation to others for their time and effort in assisting you. Such acts go a long way to strengthening both relationships as well as providing you with the impetus to reciprocate.
Finally remember networking is an on-going process, ever more important in building your career in an increasingly turbulent and constantly changing marketplace. Executive coaches can actively guide the most able management through the pitfalls and dynamics of a powerful, consistent career management design. After all it’s not just what you know but who you know!
If you are looking to gain a promotion or recently regrouping after an annual review setback, check out my Executive Coaching Case Study on Gaining Promotion.
Alternatively, drop me an email on ginette@ginettesibley.com OR simply call me on 07739 551 524 and get the journey started!