Promote Yourself (24 page)

 

Having Trouble Finding the Right Activity?

Sometimes finding the right activities is a bit of a challenge. You can jump start your search by asking your manger what sorts of opportunities there are, what the best groups are, the best organizations to volunteer for, and so on. Don't forget to ask for an inside contact—it's always easier to get involved if you know someone. You can also get a lot of ideas by joining some LinkedIn groups and/or other industry forums. And while you're online, do some online research:

•
For associations, check out
Job-hunt.org/associations.shtml

•
For philanthropic groups, try
Foundationcenter.org/findfunders

•
For volunteer opportunities, try
Volunteermatch.org

•
For events, try
Meetup.com
, where you can search for events in just about any imaginable category. Then go to some of the meetups. Another great source is
Eventbrite.com
, where you can search for events—local, regional, or national—that are relevant to what you want to do.

 

 

When a Rifle Is Better Than a Shotgun

According to
Job-hunt.org
, seven in ten people belong to at least one organization. That's great. However, 25 percent of people belong to four or more. That could be a problem. In general, it's better to do a few things well than a lot of things poorly.

The issue here is perception: People need to see that you're fully invested in what you're doing. And if you're involved in thirty different things, you can't possibly do all of them (or, for that matter, any of them) well.

 

How to Maximize the Career Benefits of Outside Activities

I mentioned above how important it is to be sincere when getting involved in extracurricular activities, especially philanthropic ones. At the same time, though, we're talking about using those activities to further your career, so it's important to know how to get the most career benefit from the great stuff you're doing.

When you join an association or get involved in a charitable cause, put it on your LinkedIn profile. If appropriate, put it on your Facebook page too (I'm always surprised at how many people overlook this simple but effective step). At work, share insights you've learned from your outside activity with your coworkers. Comments like, “Oh, we were just talking about that at last night's meeting of the Widget Association,” are a perfectly acceptable way of subtly promoting yourself that shows you're constantly trying to learn about your field and adds value to your team and your company.

If you give a speech, record it and put it on your Web site, your social media pages, or even your company's Web site. Ditto if you wrote an article or particularly insightful blog post. If possible, get an endorsement from the person who gave you the speaking opportunity, from people in the audience, or people who read your article. All of this shows that you're respected in your field and increases your visibility, your credibility, your network, and your value to your company.

 

Networking for Life

Always network before you need to. If you wait until you need some business contacts, it could take you weeks or months to make them. Networking, whether you do it at work or outside the office, allows you to better adapt, opens up new opportunities, and protects you against forces you can't control at work. When you're networking, you're putting together a team of people who will be able to help you get ahead faster. Remember, though, it's all about mutualism. Add value and you'll get value back, but never take more than you give. Don't look at networking as a chore or as something you have to do temporarily in order to advance: Networking is life. Never stop networking, whether it's inside your core group, in other departments, at networking events, when traveling, and online through social media. Be selective so you don't waste anyone's time, and figure out how your skills or connections can benefit other people so they'll return the favor and help you as you progress in your career.

It's a 24/7 world and just because your work hours are over doesn't mean you can stop learning, developing yourself, and making new connections. There are hundreds of nonworkplace opportunities that you can take advantage of and use to strengthen your brand. Select the more appropriate outside activities, such as joining an industry association that will help you achieve your goals. Be sure the activities you do add value to you and your employer. Don't try to do too many activities at once because you'll burn yourself out and you won't be able to give 100 percent to each one. It's better to focus your energy on a few that you can do really well than several that you can do a so-so job at. These activities will make you more aware of what else there is out there, help you test your skills in different environments, and give you plenty of great opportunities to meet new people outside your day job.

Your network is your net worth and your greatest career asset. It's worth more than what you know, your job title, and even your salary. What makes networking such a powerful tool is the same thing that makes public relations more effective than advertising. You can talk yourself up all day long, but the publicity you get from having other people talk you up is priceless. As you grow your career, you should be growing your network too. A strong network can promote you without you actually having to be in the room. They can advocate for you when negative things are said about you and sing your praises to people who can open doors for you, and in many cases they can even open doors for you themselves.

 

9

Turn Your Passion into a New Position

 

Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life.

CONFUCIUS

 

Businesses are always looking for ways to find top talent and keep their costs down. However, given today's economic situation, the two often seem mutually exclusive—in other words, you can either have top talent or cut costs, but not both. A growing number of smart employers, though, have figured out a way to have their cake and eat it too: hire from within. Let me give you a few quick examples.

Novelis, the world's largest manufacturer of rolled aluminum products with 11,600 employees in eleven countries, used to rely on external hires to fill talent needs. But over the past two years, 41 percent of new hires have come from within. And the company has reduced its recruiting costs by over $2 million during that time. Booz Allen Hamilton's internal recruiting system called “Inside First” filled 30 percent of the company's open positions with new hires in 2011—an increase of 10 percent from 2010. Enterprise Holdings made approximately 10,000 internal hires in their fiscal year 2012, up from 8,700 in FY 2011. These and many other companies are changing their focus from external to internal hiring for four reasons:

 

•
It's cheaper.
Recruiting costs go down, as do travel and relocation costs, advertising expenses, and training. It costs companies an average of $8,676 to hire someone internally, but $15,008 to hire externally—that's nearly double—according to Saratoga Institute's Human Capital Report.

 

•
It's quicker.
Typically, filling a position from outside can take anywhere from six weeks to six months (or longer). With internal hiring, the process usually takes just a few weeks.

 

•
It works out better.
It's easier for employees to succeed at a new job in the same company because they already have connections and knowledge about how work gets done. Forty to 60 percent of external hires are “unsuccessful,” compared to only about 25 percent of internal hires, according to Human Resources Executive Online (hreonline.com).

 

•
It's good for morale.
“Promoting internally encourages employees and shows them that they have a future at the company, therefore serving as a retention tool,” says Allison Cohen, Director of External Communications at Hill
+
Knowlton Strategies. Cisco found that its internal career program called “Talent Connection” has increased their employees' career satisfaction by 20 percent.

So what does this mean for you? Well, a lot of people have jobs that they don't particularly like but, because of the current economic situation, they're afraid to make a change. So they keep doing the same thing over and over and they get more miserable by the day. This is not the way life should be—and it's definitely not the way it
has
to be.

Here's one of the most important pieces of advice I can give you: If you don't wake up in the morning excited about what you're going to do at work, you'll never be able to progress in your career and you'll never succeed in life. Think about it. You probably spend more time at work than you do anywhere else. If you're happy there, you'll be happier in everything you do.

The trick is to turn your passions into your job. It's not always easy, but it is possible. I did it, dozens of young people I've worked with have done it, and you can too. When you're genuinely passionate about what you do, work becomes a hobby. And that passion becomes a beacon, attracting positive attention from your manager and coworkers. When you're passionate about your job, you'll naturally work harder, put in longer hours, and do it all with a smile on your face. That's good for your manager, it's good for your team, and it's great for your company. If everyone had a job they loved at your company, the business results would show. Genuine passion is almost always obvious—people will be able to see it in your eyes. When you're passionate about your job and your career, that passion is almost palpable. The positive energy you produce has a way of flowing outward to the people around you, who get inspired and want to work with you. Managers can't help but see passionate workers as people who will do successful things and should be put in positions where they can make those successes a reality.

But you're going to need some strategies to make that happen. And that's exactly what you're going to learn in this chapter.

 

Should You Make a Move? A Checklist

Before we get too far into this, let's take a few minutes to figure out whether making a move is (a) in your best interests, and (b) going to be possible at all. I want you to start by asking yourself the following questions:

•
What are my passions? Another way to look at this is to track how you spend your free time. If you find that you're reading twenty articles a day on a particular topic, that's a pretty big hint.

•
Am I using all my talents in my current job?

•
What do I like most and least about my current job?

•
Is there anything I can do in my current job to make it more enjoyable? (If so, you should explore these options before changing positions.)

•
What is it about the job I'm thinking of moving to that interests me?

•
Are there any aspects of the new job that I think I'd hate?

•
What are the highest-growth areas in my current company? And what are the roles that are most in demand?

•
I've got my eye on a new position, but am I really passionate about it?

•
I've got my eye on a new position but I'm not qualified. What skills do I need to learn? How will I learn them? Do I need to take classes or shadow someone who's already working in that job?

•
Have I honestly assessed all the different opportunities there are within my company?

A lot of people are afraid of trying to pursue their passions at work. They worry they'll get turned down, that it will complicate things at work, or that it could even end up hurting their career. I have two responses to that. First, managers actually like people who make lateral moves. It shows they know how to work in different types of organizations.

Second, if you ever want to be able to have a chance of enjoying your work life, you really don't have a choice.

 

Leveraging “Passion Projects” into a Full-Time Job

Sometimes your passions will come from outside of work—a hobby or activity you love to do but aren't getting paid to do it. Other times, you may have a passion for something that is being done (or could be) within your company. I want to give you two very different examples of people who were able to turn their passions into full-time jobs—without leaving their employers. The first one is my personal story.

On October 4, 2006—while still working at EMC—I started my first blog called Driven-to-Succeed, which was a career development guide for college students. It was my way of sharing what I'd learned in the recruitment process so others could prepare for the real world. The problem was that no one commented on the blog and very few people would answer my e-mails because no one had heard of me. Then, on March 14, 2007, my entire world changed. That was the day I read Tom Peters' famous article “The Brand Called You.” Peters' words really hit home and I realized immediately that I could become the Gen Y spokesperson for personal branding because that's exactly what I'd been living all along. That night, after an EMC training session, I raced home and started my blog,
PersonalBrandingBlog.com
, and have never looked back.

That same day—exactly ten years from the day Tom Peters' article came out on the cover of
Fast Company
—the magazine wrote about my six-month-long personal branding journey. After reading the profile, Google invited me to speak (what a lesson in the power of publicity!).

Until then, EMC had no idea what I had been doing outside of work, and I didn't feel that they needed to because I considered it a hobby. But EMC's public relations people caught wind of the article and sent it directly to a Vice President who was starting a team to manage EMC's social media program. I got an e-mail the next morning from the VP, and we met. Through what I had been doing online, he saw how passionate I was about social media and personal branding. And by the time I met him, I was excited about the prospect of doing the same thing for the company. A few meetings later, I had created the first ever social media position at EMC—a Fortune 500 company—without ever having to fill out a single application. They were coming after me because they'd seen that something I was passionate about could benefit the company. And that's how I ended up making money doing what I loved.