The week between Christmas and New Years…depending on what you do for a living, this can be the slowest time of the year and you might be looking forward to catching up with your Facebook games or taking longer lunches for a more enjoyable workout. It also is a time when those seeking a new job take time off from their search figuring that recruiters and decision-makers are doing the same. But there are those who realize that this is a unique time to stand out from the crowd and use it as an opportunity for some career-climbing and to help shape your personal brand for a productive new year. Let’s take a look at some things you should be doing over the next week.
1 – Reach out to your connections.
You spend time building up a sizable network on LinkedIn, but when was the last time you reached out to any of them to further develop the relationship? Year-end provides a great opportunity to congratulate them on an accomplishment during the year and to remind them of why you value the connection. If they’re working, this might be a slow time for them and they might appreciate meeting for breakfast or lunch. If they are away on vacation, they’ll appreciate knowing that you’re thinking of them. Personally, I love when I get a call out of the blue from a former colleague. It is great reconnecting and allows me to check in on the market and potential opportunities. Another thing I like to do is to recognize a few connections who happen to be suppliers/vendors or former co-workers and to provide them with an unsolicited LinkedIn recommendation. This helps build the relationship and will show them how important your connection to them is.
2 – Update your LinkedIn and other social network profiles.
This always gets put off during the year, but make it a point of reviewing your profile. You may have received certain accolades during the year or maybe you have new responsibilities or work in a different department….take a moment to freshen up your profile and make it relevant. Sites like LinkedIn have added many new features during the year, so read up on how they can help you make your profile more SEO-friendly.
This is also a good time to do a sanity check on your other networks like Facebook. Look at your postings and photos as a recruiter would and remove anything that is questionable. Check your privacy settings (they are always changing and require you to opt-out of new “features”) and also be sure that your connections do not have photos posted of you that should be removed. Facebook added an auto-tagging feature that you should absolutely disable (Click Here for instructions).
Finally, take a look at your social media mix. Do you make use of the appropriate tools? Do you have a twitter account sitting idle? Have you joined 100 LinkedIn groups but have never posted to any of them? Are there accounts you should delete…and maybe some new ones you should try out?
3 – What do you want to learn this year?
Are there technologies or methodologies in use at work that you’d like to acquire? What are you doing to create learning opportunities for yourself? It is a bit of a cliché with creating New Year’s resolutions, but this is the time to commit to your own self-development. Do not wait for your employer or boss to create one for you, take ownership and develop your own plan for achieving your goals. Here is an article I wrote that also has a form that you can download for documenting your plan – Click Here.
4 – Organize yourself.
I will admit that this is always the one area that I need the most help in. During the year you always wish you had time to reorganize your electronic and paper data. Now is the time to do it. Does your method of organizing emails and documents work for you? Do you maintain file folders in a way that allows you to quickly put your hands quickly on any needed document? Is your desk cluttered…what first impression does someone have when they walk into your workspace? Everyone will have a different system for how they organize things, but give yourself a couple of hours this week to clean up and to make those changes you always wanted to make.
5 – Learn more about your company.
During some downtime, make it a point to learn about your company. Regardless of whether you work for a large multi-national or a smaller startup, you should definitely know who your top competitors are, what their products are, how they differ from yours, etc. Do you truly understand the organizational structure of your company and have you taken some time to read through some of the financials? Do you understand your product / service life cycles, do you know your top clients and how the work you do contributes to their success. This is a great time to sit with a trusted manager or mentor at your company and to demonstrate your desire to learn more about what makes things tick.
In my position, I’ve always have had to work the last few weeks of the year, whether it was for managing HR benefit renewals, finishing up the year-end financials, helping to close the last big deal of the year, or upgrading networking equipment at our data center. But I always make it a point to use this year-end period to tweak the personal-brand and to pay attention to some of my career development goals that I ignored during the year. Especially in today’s market, business as usual is no longer acceptable when it comes to one’s career. The person who aggressively takes ownership of their own development will always be the one who comes out ahead.
Michael Kazazis is currently a Principal at Mercer. In 2011, Michael negotiated the sale of Censeo Corporation, a leading providing of assessments / consulting services in the HR marketplace to Mercer. He previously he was VP of Operations and Finance / Co-Founder of Censeo. In 2011, Michael was name CFO of the Year by the Orlando Business Journal. He has an MBA from Rollins College and is an active volunteer and board member for several organizations in the Orlando, FL area.
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Filed under: Career Management, Facebook, LinkedIn, Networking, Personal Development
