Promote Yourself (3 page)

 

11. You are the future.
By 2025, 75 percent of the global workforce will be Gen Y. That means that even though you may be early in your career, in the not too distant future you'll be at the forefront. Right now, you have to position yourself to take one of these major leadership roles when the workforce shifts and older generations retire. More on this in Chapter 1.

 

12. Entrepreneurship is for everyone not just business owners.
A lot of people define
entrepreneurship
as starting a business, but in recent years the meaning has broadened to include someone who's accountable, who's willing to take risks, and who sells him- or herself. If you want to get ahead, start looking at your company's management as a venture capital firm. Be persistent, sell your ideas to them, and come up with innovative solutions no one else has thought of.

 

13. Hours are out, accomplishments are in.
If you want to keep your job and move up, stop thinking that you have to put in a ridiculous numbers of hours per week. Instead, realize your value, deliver on it, measure your successes, and then promote yourself.

 

14. Your career is in
your
hands, not your employer's.
No matter what they say, companies are looking out for themselves. And while you should definitely try to make your company successful, you need to make sure that you're getting something out of the deal too. If you aren't learning and growing, you aren't benefiting anymore and that's an issue that you will have to resolve. Don't rely on anything or anyone: Be accountable for your own career and take charge of your own life.

*   *   *

If you want to succeed, you'll need to master these new rules. I wrote this book to help you do exactly that. While
Me 2.0
, was about how to get a job through social media, this one is about what happens
after
you have a job. How do you get the skills you need to advance in your career? How do you prepare yourself to deal with any problems that may come up in this incredibly uncertain time? How do you network with executives and managers? How do you manage relationships between people from different generations? How do you create a personal brand that showcases your uniqueness, will make people take notice of you at work, and will help you promote yourself faster than your peers are promoting themselves? In short, that's what this book is all about. And instead of telling you to quit your job and start your own company or break corporate rules, I'm going to instruct you on how to stay within the corporate policies, while reaching your true potential at work.

This book is written for all you high-potential young workers like Jason, who have no clear career roadmap, but are willing to put the effort in to make a difference for your company, and yourself. Of course anyone who's looking to get ahead at work or in their career will benefit from reading this book as well. And you're going to get a unique blend of my experience and the experiences of hundreds of people just like you from interviews I conducted with more than 100 employees, managers, and executives at major companies like Intel and PepsiCo, as well as the results of a proprietary study my company did in partnership with American Express, where we surveyed 1,000 young employees and 1,000 managers. The results will surprise you and shed much needed light on the trends, tips, statistics that are the secrets to getting ahead.

This book contains eleven chapters, each one aligned to the “think inside the box” method that's required to be successful at work. As the workplace changes, you need to know the new rules and how to navigate through them. I also realize that even though most people are and will continue to work for companies, some of you will be drawn toward entrepreneurship. So even if you know you'll be on your own someday, it's often extremely helpful to get some corporate experience under your belt before you turn in your office keys. Whatever your path, this book will serve you as both an instruction manual and reference guide.

In the first section, I'll show you how to get the skills you need to succeed. We'll talk about hard (technical) skills, soft (interpersonal) skills, and social media skills. You will learn about the skills you need, how to go about obtaining them, and how to use them to advance.

In the second section, we'll move on to how to get yourself known for those skills, how to build a following, how to make yourself more visible, and how to boost your influence within your organization—all without being too self-promotional.

In the third section, we'll focus on the results of the study I mentioned, which will unveil what managers are looking for when retaining and promoting young talent (and what the young professionals think the managers are looking for; hint: the two lists aren't always the same). When you understand corporate needs, you'll make fewer mistakes, advance faster, and feel more confident in the workplace.

In the fourth section, we'll talk about activities you should be doing outside the workplace to advance your career on the inside. I'll show you how to take the ideas you're most passionate about and use them to move to different positions within your company. We'll also talk about how you can essentially start your own business while you're still on the job—and how to get your managers and executives to support you—and give you the resources you'll need to make it happen. Employees are becoming more entrepreneurial at work. And many companies are acting kind of like venture capitalists, seeking out high-potential employees and rewarding innovation
inside
the box, funding projects that might have died on the vine if you had to go out and get your own funding.

Finally, in the last section, we'll talk about making changes. Chances are you won't be at the same job your entire career. So we'll talk about how to assess whether to stay with your current employer or move on; what to do if you hate your job but can't afford to leave; how to handle recruiters, ask for a raise, and much more.

Corporate America may be changing quickly, and we can't count on the economy to turn around anytime soon. But if you follow the steps I've laid out in this book, you have every reason to be optimistic. In each chapter, I'll help you through the process of identifying the skills you'll need to move ahead in your career—and how to get them. Knowing that will give you a tremendous advantage over your peers who will be spending a huge amount of time floundering around learning what you'll already know. It will also make you more successful and fulfilled in your current position, and give you the tools you'll need to move confidently into your next position.

I'll leave you with this final thought before we set out: Although the focus of this book is on thinking inside the box—succeeding and advancing
within
your organization—it's critical that you be open to new possibilities. In an ever-changing job market, you need to be able to change right along with it. Throughout this book, I'm going to show you the possibilities and help you take advantage of them. Your career is in your hands and I'm here to support your ambitions and help you promote yourself. Let's get started!

Cheers to your success,
Dan Schawbel

 

1

The Future Is YOU

 

Millennials hold the keys to unlocking the secrets of tomorrow.

—
BARRY
SALZBERG
,

G
LOBAL
C
HIEF
E
XECUTIVE
O
FFICER,
D
ELOITTE
T
OUCHE
T
OHMATSU
L
IMITED

 

We are Millennials. We are eighty million strong and we're taking over the world. I am fully confident that this generation will transform business as we know it for the better. We've lost trust in organizations, we're pushing them to align with social causes, and we want them to support our local communities. We aren't fond of corporate hierarchies and don't want to feel constrained by a nine-to-five workday. We believe that companies shouldn't judge performance by tenure, age, or hours worked but on results achieved. As more of us enter the workforce, change will happen rapidly and companies that don't adjust will lose out on the most in-demand talent pool in history. In 2014, 36 percent of the U.S. workforce will be Millennials (aka Gen Y). By 2020, we'll be up to 46 percent, and we'll account for 75 percent of the
global
workforce by 2025.
1
We have the power to change corporate America because a decade from now we will
be
corporate America. We have the power to change corporate America because a decade from now we will
be
corporate America. Valerie Grillo, Chief Diversity Officer of American Express, understands the full potential and magnitude of Millennials. “We live in a world where digital and social media have completely changed the way we connect with and market to our customers. Attracting and retaining the best available talent is critical to long-terms success—Millennials are a key component of that strategy.”

But this isn't a story only about the future. A recent study by my company and PayScale concluded that 15 percent of Millennials are already in management positions.
2
As our influence continues to grow, I believe that we'll force companies to be more transparent in the workplace, have a more honest recruitment process, and become more collaborative. Hierarchies will collapse, mega corporate buildings will consolidate and turn into optional coworking spaces. Employees will be able to work anywhere at any time and will be judged only on the results they produce.

The workplace will become more like a game instead of a chore, and will have a culture that looks more like a start-up than an old-school enterprise. This is great news for workers and for any and all companies that adapt to these changes. But don't just take my word for it. Cynthia Trudell, Chief Human Resource Officer at PepsiCo, also sees the tremendous impact Millennials will have on the workplace. “Many of the operating changes we're making today are designed to move ourselves to a flat hierarchy and away from the old traditional command and control. If you envision the future and you watch the way Gen Y works as a team, it's because they're trained to do that in school, and that's the way of the future.”

So why am I telling you all of this? Simple: I think that by understanding the impact your generation will have on the workforce in the years to come, you'll know what you need to do now to get noticed at work and get people interested in your ideas. Once that's in the bag, you're well on your way to becoming a leader at your company.

Some companies have already begun changing their culture to make it more Millennial-friendly. The same PayScale study I worked on shows that the average tenure for Millennials is two years (five for Gen X and seven for Baby Boomers). Chegg Inc., an online textbook rental service based in Silicon Valley, had trouble retaining its Millennials for even the two-year average.
3
The company created an unlimited paid-vacation policy, something that HubSpot, Netflix, and a few others implemented years before. Employers that offer these plans find that besides being a good recruiting tool, they also increase employees' productivity by eliminating stress from their lives that could impact their job performance. Some employers have gone even further, actually giving employees spending money to use during their vacation, but with the caveat that they can't do
any
work and have to be completely disconnected from technology while they're away. Employers say that when employees get back they're more refreshed and ready to go.

The annual turnover rate of Millennials at Chegg has fallen by 50 percent each year for the last two years as a result of the program. Another company, software maker Aprimo, guarantees recent college grads an increase in responsibility within a year, a policy the company credits with increasing their Millennial retention rate by 85 percent.
4
Bottom line: Companies that demonstrate to employees that they care about them and their careers (in part by making the workplace more Millennial-friendly and providing opportunities to take on more responsibility) will retain them. Everyone else will lose the battle for talent. But we still have a long way to go.

Here are a few more examples of the tremendous impact Millennials will have on the workplaces of today and tomorrow:

 

•
We'll take down the firewall.
Millennials are always connected through technology, and use social media tools and their smartphones to keep in touch with family, friends, and coworkers. Smart companies will allow for social usage at work because it makes workers more productive, allows for fast and cheap communication across the world, and makes their employees happy. On the other hand, companies that block social media sites in the workplace and limit our mobile device choices will have trouble recruiting and/or retaining Millennials. When Millenials take charge of the workplace, all companies (with a few exceptions in highly regulated industries) will allow for open technology use. Thirty-three percent of Millennials would choose social media freedom and device flexibility over a higher salary. And according to Cisco, 56 percent wouldn't work at a company that banned social media use.

 

•
We will turn work into more of a game than a chore.
Millennials grew up playing video games, and we're constantly pursuing our dream jobs. We aren't willing to settle, are highly optimistic, and believe that our job should reflect our lifestyle. When we're bored with our job, we end up leaving. In the future, Millennials will turn the way that work gets done around. Gamification in the workplace is already starting to gain traction now but will become standard in the future. Gamification is a new way to train and develop employees using games. One example of a company that's already used gamification to cultivate a loyal millennial employee base is BlueWolf Consulting.
5
Employees at BlueWolf earn points by posting new topics for discussion or responding to coworker posts, which keeps the company innovative and increases engagement. In addition, they are encouraged to share posts, white papers, and other materials through their own social network profiles. They earn points when their posts are clicked, which can be cashed in for different prizes such as iPads or lunch with the CEO. As a result, their Web site traffic increased by 45 percent, and traffic on their corporate blog went up by 80 percent. Gartner predicts that by 2014, more than 70 percent of companies will have at least one gamified application.