Create a Plan and Lay Out Milestones

Rule #1: Set your own goals.

Don’t wait for someone to tell you what to do. Analyze your company carefully, and try to understand what you can do which will make a significant difference. Get a handle on the problem, develop a solution, and a consensus around it, lobby for approval, then execute better and faster than anyone else.

This is accomplished most effectively by breaking down big projects into small, realistic and manageable daily goals. When you focus on your career, think in terms of concrete, realistic steps: gaining experience in a different area by taking on a new assignment; taking short courses or attending seminars in cutting edge topics; improving your performance by 20%; decreasing by 20% the time it takes you to accomplish a task.

From those incremental improvements, you can begin to lay out significant milestones, such as moving from middle to upper management.

Develop an “Advisory Board”

To keep your career going strong and achieving its full potential, you will need a sounding board, someone who can provide you with an objective judgment of how you’re performing. This can be a trusted mentor, or a group of professional friends, who are willing to meet with you occasionally and review the milestones you’ve set for your career. And don’t forget your significant other. A spouse or partner will usually give you an honest appraisal…mine does….of whether you’re setting your goals too high or too low.

Frequently, changes take place in an industry or pay scales change, and, if you been putting in long hours, you can miss them or fail to realize their significance or how they can impact your own career. To gain perspective and an objective viewpoint, it’s invaluable to be able to turn to trusted advisers.

Take on Public Speaking

It’s impossible to overemphasize the value of being a good communicator. What all leaders share is the ability to articulate and communicate their goals with such passion or eloquence that others are motivated to share those goals and join together to achieve them.

Regardless of whether you are an eloquent speaker, you can at least bring interesting news to an audience, in a fresh and organized way. Since most people in a general audience are not as up to date on your field as you are, you should be able to convey something to them which is of interest and which they didn’t know before.

If you are able to display a mastery of a subject, and keep your presentation brief and to the point, you will make an impression. And public speaking is one of the best ways to raise your profile in the community and in your professional circle.

Create A Skills Inventory and Continue to Expand

Whether your skills are based on your ability with graphics, or your talent for getting an office organized or inspiring people to join your project, you have a set of skills to track and build on. Create your own “portfolio” which identifies and documents those areas you have developed the most and have the greatest competitive advantage in, as measured against your peers, and make its continuous expansion an ongoing priority.

Remember – It’s Still About People: Develop A System to Leverage Your Contacts

Take a hard look at how you are networking and make some basic decisions about how to develop a system to make personal contacts and extended networks work better to advance your career.  Sometimes it takes a little effort.  In the web business, I am finding that I can meet as many influential decision makers and thought leaders at the right tech networking event in Austin as I can in…. let’s say a month of Sundays… in my city.  The downside: It’s an hour and 15 minute drive.  The upside: the contacts and business potential, not to mention the learning experience are well worth it.

To extract and build on the value of your contact, it is important that you be able to recall the details of your meeting and the specifics of the other person’s job and your conversation. My tech buddy drives up to Austin with me and we both collect business cards, sometimes jotting notes on the back of them about details we particularly want to recall.  When we get back we scan them and exchange them by email.  Voila! Twice the new leads, prospects and contacts, and, at the same time, someone to share the drive and dish about industry trends or whatever projects we’re working on.

Once you have developed a system to track your contacts, and all your contact information is recorded and organized, then you should develop a system for communicating on a regular basis with people you’ve met. Communication can be something as simple as sending an email with a web reference or a reminder of an upcoming meeting or a Facebook notice about a new project. Do this regularly and you will build a network which will be there when you need them.

Creating a career plan with milestones, gathering support, continuing to expand both our career skills and our networks, if executed faithfully,  is not only energizing and enjoyable in and of itself, but definitely will  lead to success

Can You Tell Me Something About Yourself! – Careers-Employment- AdvancingWomen.com

“Tell me about yourself” is a question, usually posed at some point in an interview. In Can You Tell Me Something About Yourself? Don ‘t Let That Question Stop You Cold we discussed the fact that interviewers use the interview process as a vehicle to eliminate your candidacy. Every question they ask is used to differentiate your skills, experience, and personality with that of other candidates. And we also discussed the process of preparing for the interview and how to handle the question.  To review that discussion, go here.

But remember, one size does not necessarily fit all.  Yes, your core skills, competencies and value to the company remain the same.  But there is a slight difference in perspective, depending on who’s asking the question. For different people, with different roles in the company and therefore different perspectives  on qualities which will be reassuring to them, you should retain your core “elevator pitch” but pivot slightly to address the main concerns of a person whose role shapes his or her outlook and the qualities he or she is focusing on.

When Asked by Different People?

The HR manager or CEO of the company or the Departmental Head can ask the same question and your answer should vary slightly since the expectation of each such person is different.

When asked by HR Manager, who is all about people skills, your response should include something like this: “My career has been characterized by my ability to work well with diverse teams. I seek out opportunities to involve others in the decision-making process. This collaboration and communication is what has enabled me to achieve success in my department. People are the most valuable resource of any organization.”

When asked by CEO, who is all about the bottom line, your response should include something like this: “I have achieved success in my career because I have been focused on the bottom line. I have always sought out innovative solutions to challenging problems to maximize profitability. Regardless of the task or challenge, I always established benchmarks of performance and standards of excellence. I have never sought to maintain the “status quo.” An organization that does not change and grow will die. I would enjoy working with you to help define new market opportunities in order to achieve the organization’s goals.”

So, prepare, define your competitive advantage, think “elevator” pitch, and adjust your pitch every so slightly, depending who’s asking the question. Then go in and dazzle them with your capabilities! Good luck! And please write and tell us how you do or if you have any other thoughts to help with this process.

( If you think you may need some help clarifying and preparing any of your answers, go to Advancing Women Portfolios, email advancingwomen@gmail.com or call toll free: (888) 565-4627. We would love to hear from you and we will be happy to help.)

To read the whole post, go to Can You Tell Me Something About Yourself! – Careers-Employment- AdvancingWomen.com

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• How to Make Career Decisions
• Key to A Career Switch: Transferable Skills In Your CV/Resume

Some of the ways you might build or maintain a competitive advantage:

• Access to hard-to-replicate Talent
• Hard-earned skills
• Higher productivity due to insight or organization allowing you to be cheaper
• Low cost of living for you and your staff allowing you to be cheaper
• Protected or secret technology or trade secrets
• Existing relationships (switching costs working in your favor)
• Virally organized product and organization
• Large network of users already and a network effect to support you
• Focus on speed
• Monopoly power and the willingness to use it
• Unique story that resonates with the worldview of your target audience
• Shelf space due to incumbency
• Large media budget
• Insight into worldview of prospects–making what they care about
• Emotional intelligence of your salesforce or customer service people
• Access to capital and willingness to lose money to build share
• Connection to community

Not on this list, at least not prominently, are “we are #1!”, “we are better!” and “we try harder.” Cheerleading skills are not a competitive advantage.

Remember..If I don’t know about you, you don’t exist.