When you get frustrated with your job, it’s easy to think about leaving the job or even finding a new career. But sometimes it makes most sense to get a career makeover within your own company. This type of makeover often is called career branding or internal marketing.
You will find this process especially helpful when you’re at a crossroads. Perhaps you’ve got a performance review that didn’t go as well as you liked, yet you realized you prefer to remain and grow instead of going elsewhere. Or you might keep getting passed over for promotion.
For instance, awhile back I read about a mid-40s executive who was known as a strong contributor, yet was consistently denied promotions. He had a sense that he needed to be more extroverted, yet he wanted to maintain the strengths he brought to the company. Let’s call him “Jed” and review the steps he took for his career makeover.
You gain maximum benefit from this process when you’re at mid-career, where you still have room to grow. As you follow these steps, you not only stand to gain within your company; you become more visible and therefore more attractive to executive recruiters.
(1) Identify your career objective. Sometimes you realize you don’t want to remain in the company, but you’re using your job to develop your skills for your next career. In this case, Jed wasn’t ready to leave his company. But he did want to groom himself for a promotion.
(2) List your strengths and values.
Jed completed a brand image exercise to get a more objective perspective. He asked 20 people to describe him in three words. (A variation might be to ask people to list your top 3 strengths or the top 3 reasons they might refer someone to work with you.) This exercise will be powerful for almost everyone; in his case, he was pleased to find that many people didn’t see him as introverted but as innovative, thorough and even “highly influential.”
(3) Come up with an action plan. Assessment steps tend to be easy and even fun. The hard part comes when you have to venture out and take some actions. Mr. Lynch began to take more risks, such as speaking up in meetings even when he wasn’t fully prepared with a planned presentation.
Even more, Lynch called his current boss and reached out to other company executives, asking specifically for assignments that would give him visibility and responsibility. In particular, he called a senior manager who was organizing a conference. Told that they had everything they needed, he said, “Even if there’s a small part, I’d love to do it.” He ended up with a 30-minute presentation to 100 people in Las Vegas.
(4) The program worked. Although others say he’s changed dramatically, Mr. Lynch says he now focuses on finding intrinsic rewards in his work, in keeping with his values. However, opportunities keep coming up; most recently he was asked to lead breakout sessions at a conference. He’s even reaching out to fellow parents on his daughter’s soccer team. And he just got a message from a recruiter.
If you aren’t ready for a total makeover, you can still take some of these steps:
Identify the gaps in your background, skill set or career path. Do you need management experience? Formal credentials? Speaking experience? Writing skills? A personality that’s more outgoing? Or are you a bit of a ham (like me!) who needs to conform and blend more into the background? Don’t guess: get objective feedback.
Ask directly for help in filling these gaps.
Cultivate your personal brand, based on your values. You’ll have less stress and, ironically, more success. People can tell if you’re “the real deal.”
Set up checkpoints to assess your progress.
Going deeper …
Do you have “street cred” in your current company?
Jed had two essential assets. First, he had “street cred.” He’d been with his company awhile, had a solid track record, and fit the culture. Second, his company supported him and he received honest support and guidance from his own managers.
Often my clients are surprised to realize that they’ve got street cred to leverage. If you’re gotten early promotions, awards, above-average raises, plummy assignments, or other goodies, you’re probably a valued player. You’re in good shape to make some career-building moves.
By way of analogy, basketball players who are first-round choices tend to get more playing time and are less likely to be traded. If you’re getting signals that you’re a first round draft pick, you’ve got some leverage – and you probably have enough street sense to use your street cred wisely.
Are you getting honest, helpful support within your company?
At the other extreme, you’ll need to be sensitive to false feedback and, in rare cases, outright sabotage. Sometimes you need a job or even a new career, not career makeover.
When I was a college professor, one of my most outstanding students was a rising star in a large corporation. She asked me for advice about future coursework. Although she had a doctoral degree in organizational psychology, she was told she needed more training in marketing and finance. She took the recommended courses but her bosses never seemed satisfied.
I suggested she consider whether she was getting good advice or whether she was being stalled. To answer this question, she would have to look at the broader environment. Her company was fairly traditional and male-dominated at the time. She was achieving and even exceeding her performance goals. Given this context, she decided to consider moving to a more enlightened company.
Do you need a makeover or a new career?
To take another example, a friend I’ll call “Edward” struggled with his career. He was bored in a large company with a “serve your time” culture; his reviews all read “meets minimum standards.” In another job he clashed with a boss who fired him abruptly on trumped-up charges (he hired a lawyer to clear his record and collect his retirement pay). He was considered arrogant and unmanageable.
Finally Edward landed with an entrepreneurial company that knew how to use him. They sent him on the road as a consultant to their high-end technical clients. The clients loved him. They didn’t think he was arrogant: they wanted a confident consultant. He loved being away from the office and he was never bored.
If Edward had attempted a makeover to be more conformist, he would have probably ended up on six medications for stress and a series of unsatisfactory performance reviews. Some things can’t be changed.
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Or begin your 21-Day Extreme Career Makeover, with this ebook on Amazon kindle. You don’t need a kindle to read it — any computer device will handle the app!