#TuesdayThoughts: Know Your Worth. Show Your Worth. Shine on.

On #TuesDayThoughts we deliver a friendly reminder that you must let your light shine. It doesn't matter what stage you are at in your career. You should always shine a light on yourself. Keeping track of the impact of your work (Hint: that means quantifiable data in terms of growth, money saved, etc.) goes a long way.

How can keeping track of boring numbers help your career? Here are a few ways:

1) Get yourself that raise. Some people are TERRIFIED to ask for more money. Whenever clients come to me with this fear, I ask them what they've done to earn it. Make a list. Show them why they need you. Numbers are hard to argue with so use them to your advantage!

2) Kick butt in your performance review. Reviews are a great way to highlight some of the amazing work you've done that went unnoticed. Keeping a running tab of the unglamorous, but impactful work you accomplished can help to wow your supervisor and gain additional visibility on your team.  

3) Make it the silver bullet in your resume. A  strong bullet point that stands out has something like a number, a percent, or a dollar amount that shows you did something that actually made a difference, and wasn't just copied and pasted from your original job description. 

It doesn't matter if you set aside a email folder for "awesome things I've done, keep a section in a notebook (what??? paper and pen?? the horror), or send yourself voice memos. Just make sure you're doing something that documents the awesome things you do. It's easy to forget the difference our work makes. Know your worth. Show your worth. Shine on!

Style your virtual professional outfit: Tips to optimize LinkedIn and get noticed

Don’t get left out of the party. 50 million people are on LinkedIn. Are you?

Why LinkedIn

Think of LinkedIn as the nice virtual equivalent to the nice outfit you wear for an interview or the rolodex of contacts people kept back in the day.

                                     FYI this is a rolodex

Quick Tips:

1)    Complete your profile. Do you show up shirtless to an interview? Nope. Make sure your profile is fully dressed, too.

       What's your snack policy?

Profiles that are 100% complete get the most exposure. Make sure you completed your summary, added relevant experiences, asked individuals for recommendations, and included a picture.

2)    Make personalized connection requests. You wouldn't randomly knock on someone's door. The same etiquette applies when reaching out to potential LinkedIn connections. Include a brief message on how you know a person and why you want to connect with them.  Many people indicate their connection preferences in their profiles. Begin by asking people you know to join your network and expand from there.

3)    Keywords are Key.  Understand and use the language of your audience. Use the “Skills & Expertise” tool, located in the “More” menu and on your profile. This will help you identify keywords to populate your profile which can help you demonstrate your expertise, use of relevant jargon for a particular career path and potentially be found in a search.

4)    Join Groups.  Groups are a great way to build your network within your industry and community.  Consider your career/professional school interests. Join university alumni groups. Identify groups based on professional associations and common interests.

5)    Summarize Yourself. Creating a summary for yourself on LinkedIn is extremely individualized based on your experience and your goals.  If you need inspiration, take a look at what like-minded professionals write about themselves. Highlight key achievements, list specialties and skills you have, and explicitly state any goals you want to pursue.

LinkedIn Profile Guides and Resources

Contact Schtick We take the time to get to know you and optimize your LinkedIn profile. Connect with us and get noticed.

LinkedIn Help Center provides  support for whatever stage you are at in the profile building process.

Forget Passion. What's Your Schtick?

The advice “follow your passion and the rest will come” always made me puke in my mouth a little. Perhaps I’m a dream killer or the mom who gives the cucumber sticks instead of lollipops in your lunchbox type of career coach. To me, passion without the right balance is crap. Whether preparing someone to make their first career move, prepping them to nail an interview, or helping them land a promotion, I learned that nothing replaces a good schtick. If you want a rewarding career or productive staff, it starts by defining and channeling value.

Experience working in career coaching showed me that some people get consumed by passion and lose sight of reality. Conversely, some people focus on reality and lose track of their soul. How do we avoid this?

Well, with a well thought out, Hillary Rodham Clinton-esque plan, of course. And a good schtick.

via GIPHY

Miss ya, Hillz

My passion is writing. As an English major, I learned about the unfortunate demise many writers met. I realized quickly that I wanted to earn a steady paycheck (lame, I know), and the opportunity to buy stuff from the real J. Crew and not just the Factory (yes, I am that basic). While writing never ended up being the passion I followed as a career, my writing skills ended up being the added value I brought to every job. It set me on a path to finding what I am really good at - helping people find their schtick, and communicating effectively in various ways.

Still love ya, Hemingway. 

Enough about me. How can you find your schtick?

First, think about yourself: I know it seems useless. However, think about how you go through the motions of your day. Even at your most mindful, are you thinking about you? What do you actually like to do? What do you do the best? When are you the most at ease? Self-assessment is crucial to finding your schtick and discovering real career fulfillment.

Write (or type) it down: Even if you are on the subway start writing down skills, interests, and values in your notes. Getting ideas outside of your head is crucial to making sense of them. Try to arrange things in order of priority to better refine your next steps. Send yourself mental notes via voice memo. I am 100% the crazy person talking to myself into my headphones as I am walking down the street, but it helps me keep track of my thought processes in the midst of the crazy day-to-day.

Evaluate your current job: What do you like? What don’t you like? Is the company great but the job just meh? Consider all of these factors and think about if there is another job out there that might be a better fit. Life’s too short for meh. We need to find work that “gets” us. If you could get an outfit perfectly tailored to you free of charge, you would. May as well try to put the effort into finding the job that’s the perfect fit. It costs you nothing to try.

Talk to people: Yes, actually talk to them. Identify folks in jobs that seem interesting to you. I’ll let you start on the internet by sending emails to contacts or former supervisors. I even encourage some light internet stalking (I mean researching) via LinkedIn. Set something up. Grab coffee. Ask them questions about themselves. Clients are always terrified of reaching out to people for a quick coffee chat. I get it. It’s transparent, and people are going to know you want their help and insight. Who cares? I often ask a timid networker what they would do if they were on the receiving end of the email. Would they help the person? Only one person ever said no. She was a jerk. The truth is, most people do want to help other people. Send the email. Pay for their coffee.

via GIPHY

Find your schtick: You get it now! You’ve thought about what you need to do to be the most effective in your work, where you add your most value, and you talked to everyone on the internet about their jobs and found what seems interesting to you. Now go out there and land the job that’s best for you! Just kidding. This takes work and time. Much like anything in life once you think you figure it out, something else happens and you need to rethink it all. The most important thing to do is keep an open mind, know your worth, and be brave enough to try something new.

Stay tuned for webinars and podcasts that will walk you through even more steps needed to find your schtick. We'll share other people's stories, too. If you have an experience you’d like to share, please reach out to us at info@schtick.pro.