Best Foot Forward - Week 6: Next Steps: Taking Action
Treasa Fitzgibbon and Nicole Meyer co-hosted a 6-week Career Navigation Series in the Fall of 2020. Series attendees identified their strengths, wrote an impactful resume, and learned how to interview. Treasa and Nicole also gave advice for optimizing performance in any position including how to position yourself for promotion, how to advance women in the workplace, and moving into taking action to fully control their careers.
For their final session, Nicole and Treasa created a presentation to give attendees action items to take away and implement in their careers. No matter where you are in your career, it is helpful to take a step back to evaluate if you’re happy in your current position. If you are, setting actionable, tangible goals to advance your career like growing your network and actively contributing to industry discussion are a wonderful way to enhance your brand. Additionally, advocating for yourself, others or even taking on a mentee are excellent ways to share your success and make the workforce a better place. If you are unhappy in your career, Nicole and Treasa offered a checklist to help in finding a new career path. Perhaps the most important step in identifying a new path is doing an accurate, honest skills assessment. Once you have outlined your skillset, see what careers might call for your unique list, update your CV and begin on the path toward a new career.
No matter where you are in your career, keep these points in mind:
Be a top performer, achieving all your metrics
Be strategic about your career
- What do you want?
- What do you need to do to achieve this?
- Who can help you achieve this?
Find a small & powerful number of mentors / sponsors
- Include diversity
- Geographically, gender, race etc.
Set realistic, attainable goals
- Be specific
- Be positive (focus on what you want, not what you don’t want)
- Make sure it is directly under your control
Networking
- Identify the right network
- Actively engage in authentic networking
Advocate for yourself
- With your manager
- With your manager’s manager
- Within your network
Call out inappropriate behavior
- On your behalf
- On behalf of others
Pay it forward
- Find someone to mentor
Download attached resource file: Best Foot Forward Week 6 - Strategy and Next Steps
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