love_my_career

Love Your Career: Demonstrating Your Worth & Selling Yourself

Whether you work in a large enterprise or small company, you always need to establish your worth. Let’s assume that you have a great position, work for a great leader, like your environment . . . you probably think you can just rest on your laurels and continue to do a good job. But that is not enough today. With organizations working meaner and leaner, every employee must consider that they are working every day to keep their job.

On the other hand, you may be at that time of your career where you want to move into another department, obtain a more challenging position within your organization, or gain recognition for your work.

Just as graphic designers and artists keep portfolios of their work, so should you. For years I have been teaching administrative and executive assistants the importance of creating a career portfolio and using that to demonstrate their worth. Many administrative assistants think a career-focused “performance brief” is something they either once did to obtain their current position or as an annual “ho-hum” requirement. The Career Portfolio is NOT about job hunting. It is a professional journal created to detail how “You” Inc. has capably and measurably demonstrated professional contributions to your organization and leader’s overall success. The Portfolio captures current-and-building skill levels, recognition, career enhancements, development activities and accomplishments. It’s what a cognitive business professional bring to the table to articulate, “Game on!”

When and where can you use it? Here are just a few ideas. If you want to see the complete list and the items you would place in a Portfolio, write to [email protected] (Career Portfolio Article in the e-mail subject line) and we will send you the article I wrote, “Creating Your Career Portfolio.”

  • During your performance review
  • Preparing to write your Development Plan
  • Asking for additional responsibility
  • Competing for an internal job
  • For a new leader so he or she can quickly gain an overview of your talents and experience

In today’s world, it’s about Show & Tell. It’s not enough to tell people how great you are—so are many other people. But what makes you stand out? What are your strengths and areas of greatness? You and another administrative assistant can both be skilled at PowerPoint but one of you is more advanced; use of video and imagery. Your Portfolio should include examples of your work.

This week focus on this:

  1. If you have a portfolio of some sort, what can you add to it? What should be tossed out? What new skills have you gained? Or recognition or certificate of achievement?
  2. If you do not have a portfolio, request my article right away—do not delay. Since it’s the beginning of a new year, you can start building your career portfolio as you move through each day and each month.

Watch this video on how you can begin to demonstrate your worth.

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