8 Career Moves You
Should Master in 2016
These activities will keep you relevant and valuable as a
professional.
At CareerHMO, we work with thousands of people looking to improve
their careers. Whether it's finding a new job, getting a promotion, or even
changing career directions, we study what works and then share the best
practices with our members. We're constantly updating our coaching, community,
and content to reflect the shifts we see in the industry. Might sound boring to
you, but we're career geeks--we love it!
How to Stay Relevant in 2016
Using in-depth
research, we provide members with new tools and resources
annually to help them with what we know will be the must-do career
development activities in the coming year. For 2016,
there are eight things you'll want to master to stay relevant and
valuable as a professional:
Build your interview bucket
list.
Now more than
ever, every job is temporary. You need to do your research and keep
handy a list of companies where you would be interested in
working. You never know when you'll need to put a job search in high
gear. Better to build a list of companies that make products and services you
admire and start to connect with people who work there. Eighty percent of all opportunities come via referral. Today, your network is your net
worth in your career. Time to optimize your network should you need to tap into
it.
Take an online course.
A hot topic in
recruiting is the skills gap. Companies claim they can't find the talent they
need. As a result, the online training world is exploding with opportunity for
companies looking to upskill and prepare workers. LinkedIn's recent
acquisition of Lynda.com is a
great example. Now you can take an online class, get certified, and
two clicks later, post it on your profile for recruiters to see. In the future,
it is predicted, we will all be required to take online courses on a
regular basis to keep skills current. If you haven't taken an online course
before, now's the time.
Keyword optimize your LinkedIn
profile.
With more
than 400 million users and growing daily by two people per
second, LinkedIn is the largest professional network in the world. All
recruiters are using it to proactively find the talent they need. Job postings
have become a less effective way to attract talent. Nowadays, recruiters jump
on LinkedIn, throw in some keywords that highlight the hard skills needed for
the job (look at your Endorsements section of your profile to see what yours
might be), and out comes a nice list of talent they can reach out to. If you
want recruiters coming to you, you must spend time building keyword density on your LinkedIn profile.
Own your workplace persona.
There
are eight key workplace personas.
1. Visionary--Sees
how problems can be solved and articulates the solution in a way that
enables others to execute the vision.
2.
Optimizer--Looks at an existing process or system and immediately sees
ways to streamline or improve it.
3.
Super-Connector--Develops a huge, ever-growing professional network and
uses it to help facilitate introductions that lead to people collaborating
together.
4.
Builder--Takes any blueprint or game plan and executes on it by being
extremely resourceful and motivating those around them to be accountable.
5.
Educator--Comfortable presenting and explaining; empowers others by closing
their gap in knowledge.
6.
Researcher--Dives deep, gathering all the facts, and then presents them in
a way that ensures an informed decision can be made.
7.
Warrior--Fearless and ready to roll up their sleeves to do whatever
it takes to make a project a success.
8.
Mentor--Helps individuals experience, learn, and grow by carefully guiding them
toward opportunities to become more professionally mature.
Can you see
how having a peer with each of the strengths above can help you
succeed in your career?
These
are the team players needed to make a company run. Every company needs a
combination of all eight. And since you can't be all of them, you need to know
A) what your top personas are and B) how to leverage them. When you
understand your value and contribution to the team, you can use it to your
advantage. To get started, this online
quiz will quickly tell you what your top
workplace persona is.
Update your reading ritual. Any of us can get into a
reading rut. We subscribe to the same online sources and read them each day.
Soon, we're skimming the titles and barely taking time to read an article
fully. If this is you, it's time to shake things up and find new reading
sources. Look for fresh perspectives that will challenge your thinking and keep
you engaged. Diversity of thought is the key to creativity.
Leverage a failure.
We all make
mistakes. It's time to pick one and make the most of it. Use the Experience +
Learn = Grow model to plan a way to leverage what you learned from the failure.
Being able to share how a failure made you a better professional is one of the
best career stories you can tell. Everyone loves a good comeback story!
Write something helpful. Personal branding is here to
stay. You must create tools that showcase your expertise. Posting original articles on LinkedIn or another platform can help you
establish your credibility and give you something to share with your network.
Writing isn't self-serving; it's about serving your network so they understand
who you are and will know when to tap into you for help. That's what personal
branding is for: to keep you in the minds of your peers. Why? Review No. 1 on
this list to remind yourself about the importance of your network as a referral
engine.
Start a new hobby.
If I could
pick a slogan for professionals in the new gig economy, I'd make
it "Always be learning." A great way to keep yourself engaged with
learning is to start a new hobby. Not only does it relieve stress and give your
mind a break from your daily routine, it also helps stimulate creativity
and inspires you to learn more. More important, you never know when that hobby career could
grow into your next full-time role.
Career Improvement Always Boils
Down to One Thing
Whether
your career is a hot mess or you're successful but want
more, you'll need to do one thing to get what you want: Take action.
My new
favorite quote comes from Larry Bossidy:
We don't think ourselves into a new
way of acting, we act ourselves into a new way of thinking.
Completing
even one of the activities above will help you feel more empowered in your
career. And, as we see inside CareerHMO, once you get going, it gets easier to keep going. All
that's left to ask yourself is, "What am I waiting
for?"
BY J.T.
O'DONNELL
Founder and
CEO, CareerHMO.com
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