Promote Yourself (7 page)

 

•
Textbookrevolution.org
is a student-run site dedicated to increasing the use of free educational materials by teachers and professors. You can search for free books and textbooks.

Open Courseware (
Ocw.mit.edu
) and Venture Lab (
Venture-lab.org
) are run by MIT and Stanford, respectively, and give you access to undergraduate and graduate level courses on an amazing variety of topics from C
++
and microeconomics to media studies and foreign languages. Coursera (
Coursera.org
) is similar to the other two, but offers free courses from more than thirty colleges and universities. Treehouse (
Teamtreehouse.com
) focuses only on web design and development, and
Codeacademy.com
allows anyone to learn how to code. Besides software, you can learn to build Web sites, games, and apps. One neat feature is that you can take a course with friends and keep motivated by monitoring each other's progress. Why coding? Because it's a highly specialized skill that's always in demand. And that generally translates into higher earning power.

As the world gets smaller, having foreign language skills is also becoming more and more important. For instance, my friends who are fluent in Japanese and Chinese have never struggled to find work. Language skills also open up new opportunities for work and travel. With
busuu.com
you can start that process for free. Pick a language and start learning in a very interactive way—either on the Web or via a mobile app. You can also connect with a community of other people learning the same language so you can practice your skills.

 

General Learning About Your Field

Although we've been talking about learning hard skills, don't overlook the importance of more general knowledge—especially about what's going on in your industry. In our research, we found that 76 percent of managers and 80 percent of young employees said that having industry knowledge is a “very important” or “the most important” factor when considering junior people for promotion into management roles. There are a number of ways to gain knowledge about your industry. Most are free or close to it—all you'll need is an Internet connection. So I encourage you to explore as many of the following as possible. Every piece of knowledge you pick up will help you do your job better right now and position you to move ahead.

•
Business media.
One of the best is the
Harvard Business Review
(
Hbr.org
) for general business knowledge, but you can get a bird's-eye view and learn a lot from
The Wall Street Journal
,
Forbes
, and
The New York Times
.

•
Industry-specific publications.
Every industry has trade publications. Find yours. Ask your manager what she's reading. Take the elevator to whatever floor the CEO is on and ask his administrative assistant what the CEO is reading.

•
Blogs
are a great way to develop skills and knowledge about specific topics or entire sectors. While you can Google the topic you want to learn about, you can also find out which ones are the most popular by visiting sites such as
Alltop.com
(which categorizes the top blogs) and
Technorati.com
(a blog search engine).

•
Web sites.
There are quite a few excellent sites that offer great advice on career, entrepreneurship, and more. 30 Second MBA (
Fastcompany.com/mba
) is one of the best (the CEOs of
Time
magazine and Nintendo are there, so is Mark Zuckerberg from Facebook).
Score.org
offers free, confidential mentoring from industry experts via e-mail. This is an especially good resource if you're thinking about starting your own business one day.

•
Books
. Earning your degree is great. But getting your diploma doesn't mean you can stop learning. And while a lot of knowledge is being acquired through digital means, books still play an important role in learning (and yes, Kindle and iPad versions still count as books).

 

Becoming the Subject Matter Expert

Once you've identified the hard skills you need to do the job you aspire to, and you've figured out the best ways to acquire them (whether that's on your company's time and dime or your own), the only thing left to do is start putting those skills to work. In today's job market, simply meeting the skill requirements in your job description isn't enough. Not even close. If you're going to have any hope of getting promoted and moving up in your organization, you'll need to think beyond the job title on your business card (that's assuming your company even gives you business cards) and start adding real value to your department or company. The most effective way to do this is to make yourself the go-to expert on a specific topic or skill, the first name that pops into your coworkers' or supervisors' minds when they need help, the one they have on speed dial for special projects. In other words, you want to be just like David Trahan, a consultant at Interbrand. “I'm known as ‘one of the digital guys,'” he says. “But more specifically as the ‘social media guy.' I'm part of a small cross-functional task force that's developing our digital capabilities, training different departments on how to integrate digital into our business. I get called in a lot for brainstorms, client calls, and special projects related to digital and social media.”

The Web site
Talentdrive.com
, which has a proprietary sourcing tool that helps recruiters find résumés online, did a report recently and found that 71 percent of hiring managers are trying to fill specialized positions, but 67 percent of job seekers consider themselves to have “broad skill sets.” In other words, they're trying to be generalists, to satisfy everyone. Big mistake!

The most successful brands—whether they're individuals or huge corporations—try to be known for one very specific thing. And that's exactly what you need to do. The bottom line is that if you're too much of a generalist, you won't be known for anything. When projects come up, there'll be no reason for whoever it is that's staffing it to call you instead of someone else. So if you want to get ahead, you need to be a specialist, a subject matter expert. Specialists generate value and attention. When you're the expert and people know it, managers will seek you out. You'll become an invaluable asset to the company.

Now, just to be clear, I'm not saying that you shouldn't be good at a wide variety of things. You definitely want to protect yourself by having skills in a number of important business functions. That'll help you better adapt to change. But you can't be a superstar at everything. You can, however, excel at one thing. And that's especially important early in your career when you need the most visibility.

If you're working for someone like Mike Proulx, Senior Vice President and Director of Digital Strategy at Hill Holliday, one of the top ad agencies in the U.S., and you're not a specialist, your career will stall pretty early on. “We absolutely need specialists,” says Proulx. “While my team is responsible for social media, it's simply not possible for everyone to have deep and intimate knowledge with every social platform, policy, and best practice. We want everyone to specialize in areas that they are most passionate about and we rely on each other to share across the team, with our clients, and on our company blog.”

Bottom line: Being a specialist helps you add value to whatever you do. But because the job landscape is constantly changing, you may have to change your specialization once in a while to ensure that you're always adding value. Plus, you'll have an easier time adapting if you've got a good understanding of the big picture as well.

 

Your Career Plan

The world is changing so quickly, and there's so much uncertainty out there that it's really hard to keep up with what's going on—especially what's changing in the workplace environment. For that reason, if you're going to succeed, you'll need to be able to adapt quickly to the constantly shifting landscape.

To do that, you'll need to create a plan and identify a goal—something concrete and measurable. Interbrand's David Trahan is a firm believer in having a concrete plan. “I know where I want to go in my life, but I also have a plan for my current company,” he says. “I have a one-year plan in place, and an idea of what the next year would be if I attained my goals. I know what I need to do to accomplish my goals. I have developed an understanding of internal politics, egos, and goals, so that I can extend and tailor myself to have maximum impact in all my projects.”

Start with setting your short-, medium-, and long-term goals—you should absolutely have some of each. I've found that the most successful plans start with the end goal in mind and work backward from there, outlining in as much detail as possible the specific steps you'll need to take to reach that goal. For example, “Within the next three years, I'm going to be in a new position as Assistant VP of X. In order to do that, I'll get certified in Y and master Z skills. I'll make time to take one of the company-offered courses throughout the year. I'll also attend two industry conferences per year, go to monthly meetings of the Z networking group, and every week I'll have lunch with an industry colleague.” For people in your parents' generation, a long-term plan might go out as far as ten years, while short-term might be a year or two. But for today's young workers, long-term is probably no more than three years, and short-term could be as little as six months. Of course, you'll also want to build some flexibility into your plan: Your company could go out of business, you might have to quit your job to care for a sick relative, or a technological advance might come along that could make your goal obsolete before it happens. In cases like those, you'll need to adjust your plan on the fly, set new goals, and plot a new course.

*   *   *

Y
ou should let your interests, passions, and maybe even a little luck drive your plans too. Mary Pilon, a sports reporter for
The New York Times
, figured out what she wanted to do based on her experiences and shared some great advice with me that you can also benefit from. “I've been fortunate to work at places with people who are passionate about what they do and their enthusiasm has proven contagious,” she says. “I don't think there's any secret to making it in a career. Work hard, see ‘No' as a starting-off point, and do what you love. And be open-minded. I don't think a younger version of me ever saw myself as a financial reporter or a sports reporter. But by giving these things a try, I realized I loved these different areas of storytelling. I love that journalism can help people in direct and indirect ways. I love that the core of my job is getting things right, learning, and teaching others. I don't know what I'm going to wear tomorrow or what I'll be doing in one year, five years, or beyond that. As great as it can be to set goals sometimes, obsessing over them can blind you from the opportunities right in front of you.”

Getting to be a reporter with
The New York Times
is no easy feat, so it's hard to argue with Mary. That said, while she may not have a firm plan, she definitely has goals and ways of measuring her progress as she moves toward those goals. Make sure you do the same.

 

Become the Expert Your Company Can't Live Without

The four most important things you can do throughout the process of making yourself the go-to subject matter expert are:

 

•
Pay attention to what's going on around you.
What skills seem to be in more demand now than before? And don't forget to check in with yourself too: What skills are you using less frequently than you did in the past?

 

•
Keep communicating.
No matter how much you pay attention to what's going on, there's no way you'll be able to absorb everything. So, talk to people: coworkers, managers, people in jobs you'd like to be doing. And ask lots and lots of questions: What are the skills they value most? Least? What jobs are most in demand now? What jobs do they think will be most in demand in the future? We'll talk about how to network in the next chapter.

 

•
Make a plan.
How are you going to get the skills you need? You should always be learning, acquiring knowledge and skills that will benefit you as you advance in your career.

 

•
Stay flexible.
Remember, things change constantly. What's important today may not be tomorrow, and what will be important tomorrow may not even have been invented yet.

As you've seen in this chapter, obtaining hard skills and getting known for them can position you to get a job and can enable you to function efficiently while you're there. But if you really want to get to the next level, to be a manager, or to advance your career at all, you'll also need soft skills. That's exactly what we'll be exploring in the next chapter.

 

3

Soft Skills: Make Every Impression Count

 

We are being judged by a new yardstick: not just how smart we are, or by our training and expertise, but also by how we handle ourselves and each other.

—
DANIEL
GOLEMAN
,

AUTHOR
OF
E
MOTIONAL
I
NTELLIGENCE

 

Job results are king, right? Make your numbers, land the contracts, finish on time and within budget. Do those things and it'll be smooth sailing toward the top. Isn't that how it's supposed to work? Anyone who's been in the corporate world for even a little while knows that's not the way things always play out. You've seen deserving people skipped over for promotion (hopefully you weren't one of them). You've seen underperformers advance. You've wondered how the guy who can't think his way out of a paper bag got to be a manager. So you know that there's more to career advancement than job results. So what's the missing ingredient? Soft skills.