Chapter 9

Marketing Your Professional Strengths

Don't think once you have achieved the position you've been preparing for in training, HRD, or workplace learning and performance that you've passed the final stop in your professional journey. It's not true. Future personal passages, life events, or work situations, as well as the continuing evolution of the field, will affect you and your work in ways you can't predict. There is no way to know how any of those circumstances will alter your professional needs, interests, and goals in three, five, or ten years. So don't become complacent about your job, your clients, or your life in general.

Because you never know when you'll be making a voluntary or forced career move or professional shift, it's important to take the following actions to maintain career success and achievement:

• Keep up-to-date with new work and societal developments, practices, and trends.
• Participate in professional learning activities on a regular basis.
• Attend some professional meetings and networking sessions.?
• Conduct comprehensive personal and professional self-assessments at least once a year.
• Review and update your PDP on a regular basis.

One of the best strategies for remaining professionally competitive and in control of your career is to anticipate the information and tools you should have at hand. For example, is your résumé up-to-date? Do you know how to do a job search on the Internet? If you want to shift to external consulting, are you part of a network that can provide referrals for a lawyer, an accountant, a graphic designer, and other professionals whose services you'll need? Practical Exercise 10 at the end of this chapter is a to-do list that will help you keep track of your job search and marketing tasks.

This chapter provides guidelines for your continuing success and survival, no matter what business or societal trends and issues affect your field or how your career may evolve.

Challenges You Face

We've tried to envision the field of the future based on present trends and research. Throughout this book, we've shown how the field is growing rapidly and expanding its borders. This reshaping and reforming will continue. The career model we've presented may need future revisions because of the continuing effects of workplace trends and issues and the thinking of people in the field. Ongoing mergers, reorganizations, and new start-up companies will keep affecting HRD departments and the way they conduct business.

Furthermore, the field is opening up not only to talent from its traditional sources, such as education and military service, but also increasingly to professionals from many other career fields, such as communications, computer technology, and sales. These career changers, who bring to the profession not only their specialized expertise and experience but also up-to-date training, HRD, or workplace learning and performance skills and knowledge, can provide stiff competition to established workers who have not continued their professional growth.

In the 21st century, training, HRD, and workplace learning and performance professionals will face such challenges as having career fluidity, establishing career management as a priority, and maintaining career healthiness.

Having Career Fluidity

One basic professional challenge is having career fluidity—being adaptable to the changes and realities of the workplace. Don't lock your career into a rigid and motionless mode because there's no such thing as job security today. How do you remain flexible and ready to take advantage of unexpected opportunities? How do you stay ahead of the curve and on top of things? How do you keep up with new technology and information? How do you stay competitive in the job market? To continue experiencing professional success and meaningful work, you must

• maintain your unique professional niche
• decide when you need to move on and what your next step will be
• select specific new skills, knowledge, and competencies that enhance and will move your career forward
• keep alert to new professional opportunities and innovative possibilities
• find the time to continue your professional development.

Taking care of these activities in a timely and effective manner strengthens your career fluidity. To maintain control over your career path, use your PDP to keep you on target and focused on the next steps to take. The plan enables you to step back and gain a perspective on any barriers that are causing your career to stagnate.

Career fluidity is sustained by being prepared and positioned to move or shift, either when it unexpectedly becomes necessary to do so or when you have decided it's time to take the initiative and make a change. These actions can only be done when you're controlling your career and tending to your work life on a regular basis.

Making Career Management a Priority

The challenge here is to make career and professional tasks one of your top priorities and to integrate them into your list of things to do. You are responsible for thinking ahead and acquiring new skills and competencies and for being ready to market yourself when the need arises. In today's changing and expanding work-place, it's not enough to have work content and transferable skills—you need career management skills as well. These skills, essential for your survival and success in any work environment, include self-assessment, career evaluation decision making, research, learning, and marketing/promotion.

The cornerstone for career management is your PDP because you are using all of those skills as you develop, maintain, and apply the plan. As we discussed in chapter 6, a PDP is an evolving document that sets the path, the action plan strategies, and the success milestones for your career moves and professional shifts. To see how you're doing on career management, ask yourself two questions:

1. Am I keeping to my scheduled interim success milestones for measurable accountability?
2. Am I incorporating information from the interim milestone reviews and resulting adjustments in a yearly life management assessment?

Answering “no” to either question suggests poor career management. Ask your-self why and assess your reasons. A “no” answer to the first question may imply a lessening motivation and commitment to your long-term career goal, perhaps stemming from changes in your values or interests. Or it might be the result of interference from an external event, like a recent divorce or major repairs or renovations to your home. How and when will you get back on track? What adjustments or revisions do you need to make to regain control of your professional life? Do you need to revisit your career calling and your long-term goal statements?

Good career management takes into account other aspects of your life that affect your career goals and professional plans, like relocating for a spouse's new job or accepting a new assignment that involves travel. The last time you assessed your short-term PDP checkpoints, the consequences of a personal or professional change may not have been apparent, but they may surface during a comprehensive review of your life. So, you may need to revisit your PDP because of these personal or professional circumstances in your life.

Make a list of the things that have occurred in your life within the last year. Check those that you believe have affected or are now affecting your career and present work situation. Circle those that you didn't consider in previous adjustments and revisions to your PDP Look only at the circled circumstances and describe how and why their impact is significant. Decide if and where any rescheduling, modifications, or revisions are needed in your PDP as a result of these unaccounted-for circumstances. For example, if you didn't research coaching institutes as listed in your action plan, was it because of time limitations or a shift in your thinking about fulfilling work? If you recently became part of the “sandwich generation” (taking care of young children and elderly parents), how does that affect your job or business? If you have new work responsibilities, do you feel the need for some additional training? It may be necessary to rethink your career calling statement or perhaps rewrite your short-term career goals for a better fit with the reality of what you can carry out within the following year.

A sense of accomplishment and progress toward your ultimate vision and the goals of your professional life produces a feeling of being in control of your career. Career management is maintained by keeping your sights on the tasks and activities that are on your to-do list between now and the next scheduled review of your PDP.

The challenge is not only in making career management one of your priorities, but also in sustaining it as a routine. It's easy to get caught up in your work responsibilities and deadlines as well as personal and family schedules and obligations, and put aside career management tasks when other matters require your attention. Practicing career management should be something done without much thought to “can or should I be doing this?” Your attitude should be similar to the one you have when doing exercise activities, running personal and family errands, watching your weight, and other difficult tasks: You do it without thinking because it's integrated into your everyday schedule.

Maintaining Career Healthiness

Your career is healthy when it's sound and vigorous. Regard your career as you would your own physical well-being. You need to care for it to prevent infirmities and exhaustion. Career healthiness is maintained by managing your career whole-heartedly, with commitment and conviction. That requires that you keep up your motivation to reach your professional goals and, once you succeed in doing so, avoid becoming complacent about them. If you're content with your status and achievements, your career is in danger of losing its fluidity and health, and that's poor career management. This can lead to your suffering burn-out, losing the sense of challenge, or feeling that you're in a rut.

Here are some useful strategies for keeping your career healthy:

• Block time in your regular schedule for a PDP assessment.
• Retain harmony between your professional and personal lives.
• Build up positive energy toward your work.
• Keep your eye on what is most important to you.
• Don't coast along in your job or business, and don't take shortcuts.
• Keep your professional expectations of yourself realistic and within reach.
• Anticipate future hurdles or difficulties and approach them head on.
• Create your own interventions to enhance or redesign your position or business.
• Listen to your own inner voices or intuitions about your career.

Career healthiness involves being alert to your present work environment, status, and situation, and continually exploring future possibilities and options. Such activism shows that you're ready for unexpected opportunities or possible crises. It means that you are accepting of and able to act on changes in your values, interests, and priorities. You know you can expect to work for a number of organizations or clients in various training, HRD, or workplace learning and performance roles and functions throughout your work life, so your job search and marketing tools, resources, and strategies should be in place, ready to be initiated at any time.

Job Search and Marketing Strategies and Resources

Just as many other areas of your professional life have been affected by technology, job search and marketing activities also are in the midst of radical change. The Internet is changing the way job opportunities are posted, résumés are submitted, candidates are hired, and clients are found. But some basic guidelines for these activities really have not changed; they've only been modified to reflect current practices in terms of language, presentation style, and methods. Prior to planning your job search or marketing campaign, familiarize yourself with the following rules of the game.

Know Your Product—Yourself

What skills, competencies, knowledge, education, and achievements do you want to sell presently? We're talking not only about your field-focused expertise but also about your transferable and adaptable expertise. Use your PDP as a guide for keeping on target about your career mission and professional objectives and about what in your background you choose to high-light in a marketing document. Without truly being in touch with yourself—your strengths, weaknesses, and accomplishments—you can't project the desired professional image. Set a job objective that meets your needs, makes use of your back-ground, takes into account work you're enthusiastic about, and helps to bring you closer to achieving your career vision.

Know Your Professional Niche

Have you reviewed where you want to be in the training, HRD, and workplace learning and performance field? Compare that position or place to the present description of your professional niche. Be aware of any new trends or issues to which your background is applicable. You may need to rebundle or reprioritize your skills, competencies, and knowledge so that it is evident that you have the qualifications. This can lead to rewriting the specifications of your professional niche to reflect how you currently want to promote yourself—the professional image to be projected. You want to create a demand for your expertise, so you must describe that expertise in a brief marketing paragraph that will be the basis for introducing yourself to new contacts or for renewing old relationships.

Know Your Action Plan

Do you have an organized campaign in place? If you're serious about making a change in your professional work, you need to go about it in a structured way. Critical to the success of the campaign is that your plan of action be practical and realistic in terms of what you can add to your everyday schedule. Take into account your present job (if working), any professional development activities you're involved in, and your personal and family responsibilities. Don't be overly ambitious about the tasks and activities you can accomplish in a given period of time. Make sure you have outlined steps to take, budgeted for campaign costs, set priorities, developed to-do lists, and established timelines for your marketing strategy. Don't forget to develop activity tracking forms for networking follow-up meetings, organization contacts, referral sources, and résumé/marketing document submissions.

As with your PDP, regularly review and revise your marketing plan of action. Compare your activity tracking data with your plans. Don't be discouraged if you don't meet your benchmark for starting the next phase of your professional life. Making a job change or starting a consulting practice often takes more time than originally anticipated.

Know Your Market

Have you identified the organizations or clients who would be interested in your background and expertise, and for whom you want to work? Be knowledge-able about how local and regional economic, demographic, and business trends influence training, HRD, and workplace learning and performance practices in your geographic location. Read the business section of your local newspapers to keep abreast of growing community organizations, new start-up companies, and businesses moving into your area. You also can conduct an Internet search specific to your area and the type of organizations that interest you. Information gathered there will help you target organizations or clients needing your capabilities and experience.

Determining your potential market allows you to tailor your résumé or some other marketing document to showcase data and information that demonstrate how effectively you can meet a potential employer's or contractor's specific requirements.

Know the Marketing Tools to Use

Is your résumé up-to-date and are you using other types of marketing materials? The résumé is your most important tool for job search activities. Think of it as a marketing document that presents your capabilities in a focused and targeted way. It projects a professional image, introducing you in a unique way that is concise, directed, and clear. As a promotional piece, its main purpose is to highlight your qualifications and stimulate the right person to contact you. Given that job opportunities are being advertised increasingly on the Web, your résumé also should be formatted for electronic posting. Become familiar with the guidelines and procedures for electronic résumés. Other marketing tools to have on hand are fact sheets, capability summary cards, and business cards.

If you're starting a business or consulting practice, a professional profile or company fact sheet summarizes your services, qualifications, and types of clients or contracts you're seeking. It gives you the opportunity to present your expertise in a clear and businesslike manner. A professional profile fact sheet is used in the transitional stage of going from internal employee to external consultant, before you're ready to invest in a marketing brochure.

If you're seeking a new job, a capability or professional summary card is useful to highlight core information from your résumé. A summary card offers the opportunity to position your qualifications succinctly for potential employers. People you meet at a networking function or professional meeting and who may want to contact you at a later date by phone or e-mail can use it easily.

The standard business card presents your contact information, including your e-mail address. It's a short-hand version of your longer marketing documents and describes your professional identity in just a few targeted words or phrases.

Know Your Networking and Opportunities Resources

Have you kept up with your professional business and networking organizations and the latest methods for locating sources for job and contract leads? If you haven't attended any meetings in the last four to six months, do so soon. If your professional objectives and niche have been modified, find out what other organizations may be more relevant to your present interests. (Remember to rewrite your promotional introduction script when your career direction shifts so you'll be pre-pared to introduce yourself accurately.) Think about the professional image you want to project and the information you want to gather when networking with old and new contacts.

If you're not familiar with Internet search engines and Web sites that will be most helpful to you, do your homework as soon as possible. Set up informational interviews with outplacement specialists, career coaches, or other people who are Internet-savvy and can advise you on how to identify relevant Web sites. You need to be organized and specific when exploring the Web to locate options. The Internet can be used for an array of purposes—locating organizations, finding job listings, posting résumés, and obtaining career advice. You can find data on industries, international opportunities, specialties, corporate staffing, and career management. You can participate in career chat room sessions and network electronically. For efficiency and effectiveness in exploring career, professional, and work options on the Web, obtain recommendations and tips on procedures and strategies from people who know how to navigate the Net.

Remember also to take advantage of more traditional resources, such as your local and national professional organizations’ job and consulting hotlines, classified ads, trade and professional journals, corporate headhunters, and government proposal solicitations.

Know When You're Ready to Market Yourself

Do you have everything in place and on hand to begin the campaign for your next professional move? Before meeting with anyone to discuss your future and before using any marketing document for networking or contact purposes, prepare a checklist of tasks to ensure that all preparations have been completed. Turn now to Practical Exercise 10 on page 139 to compile such a checklist. You'll be ready to begin your marketing campaign when you have finished all of the tasks included there.

Long-Term Career Survival

Throughout the book we've emphasized how critical it is for you to take responsibility for preparing and positioning yourself to advance your career. We can't predict exactly what will happen in our field in the next few years, but we can guarantee that organizations, industries, employment, and education will continue to be redefined and reshaped. We know that the transformation of training, HRD, and work-place learning and performance will continue. We already know that job security and automatic career progression are passé. Survival and achievement now have new rules.

How should we now characterize survival? In the work-place, survival is linked to a mindset and attitude of confidence in your ability to bounce back up and find a solution to a problem. Career and job continuity happen because you're willing to risk, stay flexible, recover quickly, explore options, and be accountable for your career moves and professional shifts.

Achieving desired goals involves making choices and not giving up your power to others to make things happen for you. Accomplishment means realizing your dreams and not just settling for what's readily available and easy to reach. Professional accomplishments happen because you are motivated by challenges, focused on your ideal goals, and creative and inventive in your approach to solving problems, and because you keep a strong and confident mindset toward your work.

You stay competitive and focused in your career by staying alert to new trends and needed skills and competencies, and by acting on a commitment to lifelong learning. It's important to know how to make the most of and learn from any situation you confront, from job loss to the chance to start your own consulting business. Positioning yourself to profit from an opportunity calls for an entrepreneurial mindset, and that mindset is important whether you are internal or external to an organization. It helps you keep your career fluid and healthy and contributes to your professional survival and accomplishments. An entrepreneurial mindset values the following efforts:

• managing time and being organized
• having a vision and continually working to achieve it
• marketing and promoting yourself and your ideas, projects, clients, and customers
• speaking up and being assertive
• approaching problems creatively
• considering yourself a leader
• meeting challenges straightforwardly
• being a self-disciplined self-starter
• believing in yourself and your abilities
• welcoming feedback and receiving criticism positively.

Defining Your Professional Success

The last but certainly not the least component of being in charge of your career is your definition of professional success. This statement serves as your measurement of your place in the training, HRD, and workplace learning and performance profession.

How much time and energy do you give to your job? How much are you willing to give to a future job? Does it depend on whether you are working for some-one else or for yourself? More to the point, how many years do you expect to work? If you're a typical training, HRD, or workplace learning and performance professional, your answer probably is, “For a long time,” or “Too long” or “Until I can retire.” Ideally, when the time comes for you to transition into retirement and a new phase of your adult life, you'll feel that you've achieved professional success and that it was compatible with your values and sense of fulfilling work. That out-come would reflect a very skilled career manager indeed!

Only you can characterize what you consider to be professional success. As with your earlier definition of fulfilling work that we discussed in chapter 6, your definition of professional success is influenced by your values and priorities and the changes you undergo during your work lifetime prompted by growth, development, and life events.

A professional success statement can combine a number of factors including financial security, respect of colleagues, professional reputation, contribution to the field, job advancement, integration of career and personal life, independence and autonomy, ability to work to your fullest potential, appreciation from your employer, status as a leader, and opportunity to work in your dream job. And at different points in your life, the meaning of professional success may change for you. Before you explore other work options, you need a clear understanding of how you characterize achievement. Turn to Practical Exercise 11 on page 140 to develop a concise personal description of professional success.

In summary, we have given you a picture of what the 21st century holds for your career and the resources for managing its direction and path. The responsibility for making your work life just “okay” or for making it your passion lies with you now and for the balance of the time you spend in the workforce. Consider future changes and developments in this profession as the challenges and opportunities of a lifetime.

The pace has quickened and even as the merger of training, HRD, and work-place learning and performance is complete, a fourth focus is emerging—knowledge management. Who knows what will be next? Having the knowledge and tools enables you to move or shift confidently when necessary and, most important, to create your distinctive path to personal and professional fulfillment and success. Best of luck!

 

Practical Exercise 10: The Market-Readiness Checklist

Directions: Indicate the completion status of each job search or marketing task that is relevant to you. Complete each task before starting your marketing.

Job Search/Marketing Task	Status
	Complete	Unfinished
Print a sufficient supply of business cards with present contact information and e-mail address.	______	______
Modify professional niche description to portray my unique skills, experiences, and knowledge.	______	______
Update résumé or professional profile to project the ideal professional image.	______	______
Write a networking introductory script that states my needs and objectives.	______	______
Create a fact sheet or capability summary card to showcase my strengths and achievements.	______	______
Develop a job or service objective to summarize my description of meaningful work.	______	______
Set up a plan of action for achieving my marketing goals.	______	______
Research and identify a database of clients or organizations that would be interested in me.	______	______
Prepare for interviews with an opening statement, a set of questions, a closing summary, and follow-up procedures.	______	______
Establish a positive, confident mindset toward my campaign.	______	______
My job search or marketing campaign begins on (date).______

 

Practical Exercise 11: Defining Your Professional Success

Directions: In item A, review the professional success factors and checkmark those that are important to you. Choose as few or as many as you wish. Then rank them in order of their priority for you, making 1 the highest priority.

A. Professional Success Factor	Priority for You
Appreciation from employer	_____________
Being considered a leader	_____________
Contributing to profession or field	_____________
Financial security	_____________
Independence and autonomy	_____________
Independence and autonomy	_____________
Integration of career and personal life	_____________
Job advancement	_____________
Professional reputation	_____________
Respect of colleagues	_____________
Working in dream job	_____________
Professional reputation	_____________
Working to fullest potential	_____________
Other:______________________________	_____________

B.  Description of Professional Success: Write a brief statement that defines professional success for you. Include the success factors you check marked above and explain why they are important.