WHO is In Charge Of Your Career?

You or Your Boss?

Today’s topic is a topic I adore! Who Is In Charge of Your Career?

I get pretty excited…pretty wound up by this topic. YOU are in charge of your career.

Many people say, ‘Well, you know, I’m loyal to my employer.’

Yeah. I like loyalty. I love loyalty, but you are in charge of your career. Don’t let your employer manage your career because tomorrow, as many experienced in the year of 2020, you may be just suddenly gone…terminated…canned…let go…laid off by your company. Many people have thought they were with that company for the rest of their lives. Surprise! It doesn’t happen that way. We are in a very, very transitionary society.

So you need to manage your career while you’re gainfully employed. And definitely when you are in a career transition, I would suggest that you move around. You change companies, your employer, every four to five years.  It is not acceptable now to remain there longer than six or seven years at the most.

So you’ve got options. There are challenges. There are new opportunities, always coming down the pipeline, but you won’t find them unless you manage your career.  Have your resume up to date, make sure it’s in the 2020, or whatever year we’re in, format because the format changes, the contents change. Most importantly, make sure that it’s ATS, Applicant Tracking System, friendly so that it is able to go through that system and come out the other end.  You also want a human to be able to read it and be thrilled at reading your performance driven resume.  

Is your social media presence up to date?

So by that, I mean, have you got a very enticing, seductive, full LinkedIn profile from top to bottom? Each section is character sensitive, but be sure to fill it out. The more text you have, the more Google will pick you up.

Here are Just two tips for you.  One is to make sure you have a professional picture. I was viewing somebody’s profile and I gave them a free resume critique a little earlier on today. And they had pictures of themselves hugging their wife with their baby in their arms. Yes, that’s great, but it’s not good for a LinkedIn profile.  Be professional and just let it be you in the picture.  My second tip is to customize your LinkedIn profile. So by that, I mean, if you’ve got numbers and letters after your LinkedIn URL, that is the default they gave you when you signed up.  You need to go and customize that it…takes you two minutes and it’s free.  When you do this, Google in its algorithm, visits to your LinkedIn profile will elevate by 400%. Did I mention that it’s for free?

You also should embrace maybe taking out the premium. Yes, it’s expensive, but you get important extra bells and whistles on LinkedIn.

Don’t just consider LinkedIn as the sole social media venue. If you are in sales and marketing, I would tell you, you also need to be on Twitter. Twitter is a huge tool, even in other functions, the more social media presence that you have, the better it’s going to be for you. So embrace social media, have an up to date, ATS, friendly, resume, and manage your career from today onwards.  Set a career plan. Where would you like to be in five years?

So hopefully you’ve got my message,.my very clear message, that from now onwards, YOU need to manage your career!

I am passionate about helping you reach your career goals and so I have an offer for you; a free resume critique and LinkedIn audit. I’d like to offer you a no-obligation, no sales pitch, LinkedIn audit, and a resume critique. However, I do warn you, I am realistic and I will say it as it is, I am tough because I want you to learn what I’m going to tell you and I will remove all the red flags for you so you have a complete bank of green flags, so it will be clear sailing if you have to go into career transition. Are you interested? If so, email me in the message section on LinkedIn. Or send me an email using the link posted below.