photo credit: phill.d

When searching for the best ways to advance in your current job, you’re likely to come across plenty of books and articles that advocate scheming and shortcuts to make it to the top more quickly. Although these texts may appeal to your eagerness to graduate from the cubicle, they usually aren’t the most effective or realistic routes to help take you to the next level. Instead of waiting around impatiently or wasting your time on fruitless schemes, there are several tried-and-true ways in which you can better your chances of enhancing your career opportunities.

Practice leadership skills

It can be difficult to show off your leadership skills when you work beneath one or several individuals. Although you should avoid challenging the authority of your supervisors, you can still take initiative in the projects you are assigned by offering solutions to problems you encounter, contributing ideas and offering advice to co-workers involved in the project. Don’t complain about your workload, and strive to be a problem-solver and positive thinker in the workplace. This lets your superiors know that you are capable of handling bigger projects and responsibilities later on down the road.

Further your education

Sometimes your performance isn’t quite enough to prove that you are qualified for a position with more responsibility. Acquiring an advanced degree could give you the credentials necessary to take on greater responsibilities at work. Working toward your degree not only puts you in a better position for a promotion, but it sends the message that you are willing to put in the effort necessary to improve your performance. Earning a degree also indicates that you truly care about your profession. Since your job likely keeps you busy during most of the week, consider online education opportunities to earn your degree according to your own schedule and at your own pace.

Participate often and contribute ideas

If you’re used to skipping out or sleeping through employee meetings, you are missing out on a great opportunity to show off your advanced abilities. Participate in these meetings  by making suggestions for improvement within the workplace and submitting fresh ideas for advancing the company’s consumer appeal to truly stand out among your peers. Beyond these meetings, you should feel comfortable submitting ideas to your superiors on a regular basis. It’s crucial that you avoid submitting ideas too often and always make sure the ideas are well-thought out and well-presented each time.

Invest time and effort in your work

To prove that you are capable of handling greater responsibilities in a higher position, you have to be willing to take on the responsibilities that are assigned to you in your current position. Take pride in your work and avoid wasting time at the office. Be willing to work overtime (and not forever…Scot) and stay for the full duration of your shift on a regular basis. This lets your boss know that you truly care about your work and are willing to make sacrifices and put forth the effort necessary to deliver a job well done.

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Jesse Langley specializes in writing about education, professional and personal development, and career building.  He writes on behalf of Colorado Technical University.

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photo credit: duncan

Business goals are the holy grail of performance reviews. Or, at least they should be. After all, the business goals we work to achieve should be the most important work we can do to help the business achieve its goals for the year.

Goals, though, are a slippery slope when it comes to performance reviews. Here’s why:

1. They are a high percentage of your performance review

In large companies, your goal attainment can be 75% — or more — of your performance review. Hit your goals — golden! — and the raises and awards are awesome. Mess them up through missing your targets and frustration will set in.

How you manage, report, and communicate your goal attainment, then, makes a big difference in your paycheck.

2. The number of goals impact your performance review

Have one goal you need to hit on your review — and then miss it. What does that mean for your pay? You got nothing is what it means. The fewer your goals on your performance review, the more you are swinging for the fences.

The more goals you have on your performance review, on the other hand, the more likely you will simply do “average” or “successful” on your performance rating. Why? Because you’ll knock some out of the park and the others you won’t. And, on average, well, you’ll be average.

Now, there are some good reasons to be average and there are good reasons to try and have fewer goals so you can knock some out of the park. How well your company is doing and how likely are there to be layoffs based on performance come to mind. Lots of goals can be a great thing — or really bad for you depending on your situation.

3. How you modify your goals makes a difference

Ever had a great goal in January that is no longer relevant in March — but still shows up on your performance review in December? We all have. Those goals can be the kiss of death in our performance review rating because the manager essentially shrugs his or her shoulders and says, “Well, the best I can do with this is average because that’s all we did with this goal.”

If you don’t modify your goals as you go through the year to reflect what is happening with the business right now, you’ll get the shoulder shrug — and lost dollars on your paycheck — too.

Goals are important to your pay, career achievements, and business results you achieve. That’s why I have a SMART Goals product — they are the foundation for getting your performance review right.

Related posts:

1. SMART Goals and Writing Your Performance Review
2. Time to Adjust SMART Goals for your Performance Review
3. How to add goal attainment to your performance review — when you have no goals
4. Goals to Performance Review: Connecting the dots
5. Goals to Performance Review: Getting the rating

Click here to view the embedded video.

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photo credit: o5com

With the current climate of unemployment (8.6% inNovember 2011, although it’s expected to rise closer to 9% once holiday retail workers are no longer needed), many workers are taking jobs for which they are overqualified.  Whether it’s the young college graduate with a master’s degree taking a part-time retail job to an experienced career-worker having to take a job he did as a twenty-five year old, being overqualified can be a depressing reminder of how a recession takes its toll.

Recent college graduates with degrees but little work experience are often hit the hardest and have a very difficult time finding any employment, but those in their forties and fifties have also been affected.  And when you continue to send out applications and resumes with no response to positions for which you are overqualified but under-experienced, how do you work around that issue to land employment?  Below are some tips to get the job–even if it’s not your dream one.

Edit your accomplishments in your resume, but don’t delete them entirely

You don’t want come off as a liar, but opening your resume with how you brought your former company millions of dollars in contracts while applying for an administrative assistant position will land your resume in the dreaded “no” pile.  Someone looking at your resume will assume that you will leave the company as soon as you can find something better. So how do you go about down-playing your skills?

According to Monster.com, you should “create a functional resume where relevant skills are pumped up in detail toward the top of the resume, while overly impressive titles are demoted to the bottom and given little ink.”  So for that bottom-rung admin job, emphasize your communication, typing, time-management, and customer-service skills as opposed to your skills in landing million-dollar contracts.  At the bottom, you can then mention the contract-getting, but perhaps without the dollar signs attached.

When interviewing for the job, be as enthusiastic as possible

Once you land that interview for the admin position, the interviewer will most likely probe you to see how you would feel about doing a job for which you are overqualified.  Make sure to be enthusiastic, emphasize your best attributes about how this job will be great for you and how you will be great for the company, and simply be engaging.  According to a USAToday article, “using your personality to engage people really can overcome some obstacles.”  Your resume may make the hiring manager hesitant, but if your accommodating, gung-ho personality shines through, you may land that job regardless.

If all else fails, go back to school

Let’s face it: a bachelor’s degree isn’t as useful as it was thirty years ago.  If you continue to lack decent employment or if your current position makes you want to scream with boredom, consider getting a master’s degree.  This should never be a choice made out of desperation, however, and should be considered carefully.

Will gaining a master’s truly help you with your employment issues, or will it only land you in more debt with still no job?  It may, in the end, be the best bet for getting a job for which you are qualified and maybe even enjoy doing, or at least give you some time to let the economy approve.  Either way, it’s sometimes the best choice when jobs are so scarce.

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This is a guest post from Emily Matthews. She is currently applying to masters degree programs across the U.S., and loves to read about new research into health care, gender issues, and literature. She lives and writes in Seattle, Washington.

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1. How to stand out in Cubicle Land

photo credit: CodeFin

Performance reviews are those things that happen at the end of the year, right? So, not much to worry about until much later. Time to sit back and relax a bit, easing into the new year.

Cubicle Warriors, though, know that starting the year off right means the probability of ending the year right with their performance review. Here’s what you need to start your new year off right.

Goals are set and have to know how to achieve them (all levels)

Most companies work on your yearly goals for this year back in the fourth quarter of last year. Or maybe they are working on them right now. Regardless, you have two action items. First, make sure your goals are really set. Follow the SMART goal approach, even if your company doesn’t fully embrace that method of setting goals. If you can’t measure your goals, know they are reasonable, are attainable and have a time-frame associated with them, you won’t be able to reach — or re-negotiate — your goals.

Second, every goal has a story of how you will attain the goal. If your goal is to reduce expenses by 5%, you should have a plan to achieve that through actionable steps. So take a look at your goals. Do you know how you will achieve each of them? What your next step is to start achieving them? If you don’t, you’ll never reach your goals for the new year.

Your goal-tracking mechanism in place

It’s one thing to know how you will go about achieving your goal. It is an entirely different matter to measure your progress of attainment. How will you know you are on track for achieving your goal? If you don’t know, you can’t measure progress — or communicate your attainment to your manager.

Besides, how do you know what you attained in the first quarter when it comes time to do your performance review in the fourth quarter? You won’t, unless you have a tracking mechanism in place.

You know how to improve your competency (soft skills)

Outside of goals, the other major area of your performance review is your competencies or your soft skills on the job. Things like how well you understand the business or how you do at teamwork is not related to attaining goals, but how well you do with your team. What things do you plan to do to improve those soft skills?

Without the plan, you won’t be able to demonstrate to your manager come performance review time what you did to help the department or business with your work.

Look, it’s easy to coast a bit during the beginning of the year. While everyone else is coasting, ensure that you have your goals in place, know how you’ll track them and what you’ll do to improve your soft skills during the year.

It’s what Cubicle Warriors do.

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Performance reviews are such an important part of your year that I’m offering a 2012 New Year’s special. My “How to Write Your Performance Review” is on sale at a serious discount. But only until Midnight, January 12th, 2012. Companies won’t teach you how to write your performance review and they certainly don’t care about having you get the best performance rating possible. But you do, don’t you? Invest in your career and learn how to get your performance review right.

Related posts:

1. SMART Goals and Writing Your Performance Review
2. The single biggest mistake when writing your performance review
3. Time to Adjust SMART Goals for your Performance Review
4. Your SMART Goal status and Performance Review
5. SMART Goal Measurements Become Performance Review Facts

Last year, Jane McGonigal, a game designer and researcher gave a TED Talk about the gaming industry’s contributions to the world.

McGonigal speculated that committed gamers are equipped with an “epic win” passion that gives them a sense of purpose and focus.

McGonigal’s theory can be extended to job seekers. After all, if job seekers approach their hunt with the focus and direction that they do with their favorite video game, how awesome would that be?

In addition to McGonigal’s “epic win” theory, I would like to add on these four job search lessons learned from some of our favorite video games:

Don’t just do it for the money (Super Mario Brothers)

In this game, the plumber Mario goes on an epic adventure to save the Princess Peach while collecting gold coins along the way. He might be making money, but he’s doing what he does best to save the princess.

While this economy makes it hard to not do things solely for the money, figure out another reason for why you’re working in a particular job. Whether it’s experience, a good work environment, or a solid product, if you have another reason in addition to the paycheck, you’ll be a lot happier and fulfilled in your career.

Maneuver yourself for the perfect fit (Tetris)

Like dating, employers want to feel special when it comes to hiring a new employee. Just like maneuvering bricks in Tetris, you’ll want to tailor your job search efforts to each and every employer you apply to.

Don’t worry, you don’t have to re-write your resume from scratch for each employer, but using the employer’s language and proving you did a little research about the company can go a long way.

See it from the other side (Grand Theft Auto)

Grand Theft Auto is an interesting game because it allows the player to see things from (hopefully) the other side of the law. Thanks to GTA, the average do-gooder can get a glimpse of the criminal underworld.

In your job search, try putting yourself on the other side of the hiring table. Imagine what life is like for a hiring manager and how they see you as a job seeker. Simply thinking about it from a new perspective can help you write your cover letter, interact via social media, and present yourself in an interview.

Always stay one step ahead (Pac-Man)

In Pac-Man, you are chased by ghosts in a maze. In your job search, you are chased by competitors, unemployment stress, and expectant employers. You might not be in a maze, but you catch my drift.

The key to winning Pac-Man is staying ahead by always planning your next move. So, in your job search, anticipate the next move. When sending your resume, prepare for a response from the employer, at the end of an interview, bring up when you can expect to hear back. Not only does this keep you on top of things, but it also tells employers that you are a capable and always thinking ahead.

What do you think? What other video games can job seekers learn from? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

This is a guest post from Gerrit Hall. Gerrit is the CEO and co-founder of RezScore, a free web application that reads, analyzes, and grades resumes – instantly. Gerrit has successfully combined his passion for computer science and the careers space by helping job seekers write the best resume possible. You can connect with Gerrit and RezScore on Facebook and Twitter.

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1. Be a Tiger — Lessons learned
2. Jibber Jobber Job Search Tool Introduction Video

photo credit: sir_watkyn

It’s 2012 — and time to update your resume with your 2011 business results. Most people won’t, you know. Then, when it comes time to pull out that resume, blow away the dust, and update it, those same people won’t remember what they did in 2011 to put on their resume. Or, what they put on the resume won’t have any proof (read: business results) about what they did. Then they will wonder why they aren’t getting any interview calls.

But you will update your resume, right? Here’s how.

1. Put in your activity goal results

Activity goals, compared to outcome goals, are those where you do a certain amount of repetitive work over the course of time and, in so doing, help you achieve solid quality work for the department.

Say it is part of your job to update a database with information. Maybe it is a people database, reporting database or some other activity where you consistently update information based on input. You might think of that as boring and not worthy of a place on your resume. After all, it only takes you an hour a week to input twenty pieces of information given to you. But that twenty pieces over the course of a 50-week year ends up being 1,000 entries per year. And doing 1,000 entries with 100% accuracy all of a sudden looks like a pretty good accomplishment, wouldn’t you agree?

Don’t overlook what you repetitively do. Those repetitions show potential volume and quality of your work. Certainly, it opens up another avenue of questions where you can talk about your accomplishments to a person doing an interview.

2. Show your outcome goal attainment

Outcome goals (achieve a 5% reduction in expenses) are the most common goals handed out in business. You either make them or not, but those goals are typically the most important on your performance review. They should be the most important items you worked on during the year, so it makes sense to get them on your resume. Hiring managers want people who can achieve their goals because a hiring manager is interviewing you to accomplish something to help the manager achieve business goals.

3. Write the story of the goal attainment

Outcome goals are boring. “Achieved a 7% reduction in expenses compared to the goal of a 5% reduction in expenses.” Okay. So what?

Every goal has a story behind it on how it was planned to be achieved as well as how it was actually achieved. The ‘how’ versus the ‘planned’ is a treasure chest of interview stories you can tell a hiring manager showing your goal, how you overcame obstacles and the business results you achieved. But without writing that story of goal attainment on your resume, you won’t remember all the right details when it comes time to do an interview.

Now, not everything you did in 2011 will end up as part of your resume submission for a particular job. You wouldn’t want your stories of goal attainment on your resume that you submit for a job; you’d want to tell that story to a person interviewing you for a job. And, for example, not everything in your background will directly apply to a particular job application so you may want to take out some accomplishments to keep your resume crisp and focused.

But if you don’t get it down on paper, you won’t remember it when it comes time to make that submission. And the further on down the road that submission is, the less likely you are to remember what you did and how you accomplished it. That makes a weak resume – never getting you the phone call for the interview.

No, the time to update your resume is now. Most of us just had a performance review, the goal attainment is done, the results are in. Time to get it on our resume so that we have it. Ready to pull the trigger if we need to so we can use it.

Related posts:

1. 30 Career Management Tips: Update your resume
2. 3 ways to update a stale resume
3. 5 reasons to update a resume while still employed

photo credit: Steve-h

A healthy corporate culture must ultimately be owned and championed by the CEO and his or her management team.  At the same time, a corporate culture livesand breathes by the actions front-line employees take every day.  In our 20 years work to define and heal ailing corporate cultures, we’ve learned small changes can transform any   from finger-pointing and overload to winning. 

Great cultures are built at the level of project teams and employees. Some people are born to catalyze positive action, and don’t see position or title in their organization as a hindrance. Ghandi’s wisdom “Be the change you want to see in the world” is accurate: The best way to make change is to be it.

Here are four roles any employee can play to foster a healthier corporate culture:

1)     Truth Warrior. The truth builds trust. The willingness to seek and speak the truth without drama, blame or judgment gains respect. It cuts through the fog of fuzzy thinking. We avoid truth because we avoid conflict. This classic article “The Joy of Conflict” from Inc says it well. A business exists to win—culture is about how you play the game to win. Are you a good player? Culture change can happen in any part of the company when one person stands up for the truth. The truth can take the form of a simple question: “What is it we really want to accomplish right now, which will help us win?” Zero in on what’s within your control.

2)     People Champion. “Us versus them” is a common de-railer of success in business. Eradicate negative speak about others. We learned of a culture change in a 300-person department, led by one person who repeatedly asked ONE question whenever the team complained about others: “What do we think Joe (John, Mary) really intended and wanted to accomplish?” Until people gave a positive answer, he kept asking. Be the hero and gain tremendous respect. Consistently seek the positive, true intention. Even small-minded idiots and bad bosses have something positive they want to accomplish. Dig for that gold and watch the communication and spirit around you transform.

3)     Priority Focuser. A friend gave me the best diet wisdom: “You can eat anything you want. Just not all at once.” This translates to the “overstuffed plates” of work teams who simultaneously juggle too many work-streams. Teams must learn to make trade-offs. Try asking: “What’s the highest payoff and most important customer for us this week?” and “How can we communicate effectively and serve the customers who we must ask to wait?” (If you don’t know who your customer is, start there. Every team has one). Yes, you can do this. (see #1). We knew of a team who charted 10 weeks of wins and started every meeting by celebrating the past week’s wins. This simple method rocketed them to the #1 software team in the organization for on-time delivery, and transformed their culture.  Adopting the Scrum model from the software development team can be a highly effective method to trimming your bloated workload.

4)     Voice for Balance.  Winning in business requires a balance of diverse skills and flexible responses to change. Assess your organization’s balance v. imbalance in its culture to target areas in which you can improve work practices to strengthen your team’s playing strategy.

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful people can change the world.

Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.  – Margaret Mead

Listen up cube warriors! You-the-willing can enable your best corporate culture. If you stay committed in spite of the onslaught of culture-hindering behaviors around you, others will soon be knocking on your door wondering “What’s happening on your team?”

And regardless, changing one “cube world” is a worthy endeavor in the pursuit of happiness at work.

This is a guest post from Lisa Jackson and Gerry Schmidt. Lisa and Gerry are corporate culture experts with proven methods to enable corporate cultures to win more, innovate faster, and care about people in an unprecedented era of rapid change and transformation.

For free tools to enable better workplace cultures visit them at http://www.corporateculturepros.com/culture-tools/ or follow them on Twitter at http://twitter.com/corporatecultur

Related posts:

1. Why respecting the corporate culture of your new team is important
2. Employment Culture Counts: 5 ways to evaluate culture
3. Infomania Hits Cubicle Warriors
4. Poor job descriptions challenge Cubicle Warriors
5. SMART Goal Setting — Relevant for Cubicle Warriors

photo credit: sevgi.k

Video interviews will become more prevalent as we move forward. But video interviews are not like face-to-face interviews and as part of my work on Dice.com, I give you five tips to succeed at video interviews. Check it out by clicking here.

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1. 3 ways to succeed at video job interviews
2. Dice.com – The Secret to Networking
3. Video Job Ads — How to Evaluate

photo credit: TC Morgan Photography

Pundits will have their best and worst of 2011 articles out there. The best and worst needs noting, of course, but, to me, neither of them are actionable. Instead, I like to look at the experiences we’ve had over the year and then determine what lessons we can learn from those experiences to make ourselves better. 2011, while offering greatness, was a pretty tough year for us working in cubicles. What lessons did I learn?

We need to better influence our performance reviews

Look, the number of performance reviews that just suck is still too high. Whether it is managers showing favoritism, or not knowing what accomplishments you’ve made during the year, or completely blowing off the reviews, performance reviews remain as one of the least favorite activities to work on.

But your raise and (perhaps) bonus depend on it.

A reader wrote to me and noted that unless she did better than a “3-successful” on her performance review, she didn’t get a bonus. And, despite all that she does — and compared to her coworkers — she never gets better than a successful review. That costs her a lot of money besides ticking her off. Now, I happen to think no matter what she does, that won’t change and that informs me she should leave.

But while she is actively trying to influence her performance review, too many of us just passively wait for the performance review without trying to influence it — starting today with goal-setting — during the course of the year. That causes frustration, exasperation, often times anger — and dollars for our family’s well-being. That one extra level of performance can mean a world of difference.

Our job search and interview skills need improving

This past year I’ve probably written a hundred articles on job search and interview skills (also over at Dice.com). It is the number one traffic area on the site. You know why? Because we suck at job interviews. And then we look for easy answers to unlock the magic key for the interview so we can bypass the hard work of getting ready for an interview. When I advise people they need to practice answering interview questions, very few do. Yet, those that do practice answering interview questions go further in the interview process and get jobs more than those who don’t practice interview questions.

Because of my consulting work, I was also a hiring manager this year. And I can safely tell you that people don’t know how to interview and it kills their chances at getting the job.

Doing a job search and knowing how to interview is now a basic, needed job skill in your career profile. We’re not good at using that job skill. That makes sense since we use our job interview skills far less often than we use, say, Microsoft Office to do our work. But with 4-6 people looking for work for every job opening, job interview skills are more important than ever because of your competition for the job.

Interestingly, there is little good stuff out there to help with your interviewing skills. It will be a focus for me in 2012 to have products to help your interview skills.

We need to build employment, not job, security

There are still way too many layoffs from the Great Recession. And the recovery has made a snail look fast. Our reaction to that is to hold on to that job no matter what. Understandable. But a job is the least secure thing to hang on to because a company can take that job away in a heartbeat. Instead, we should focus on building employment security. Employment security says that, though I may lose my job, I’m still employable because of the work I have done.

You know that the long-term unemployed is at one of the highest points in history, right? The longer they stay unemployed, the harder it is to get a job. It is truly a vicious circle. You can build employment security, though. And it requires a decent amount of work, don’t you know. But I’ve become more convinced than ever in 2011 that job security is gone and employment security needs to replace it. I’ve laid the foundations of that in my free report when you sign up for my mailing list and getting “The Employment Security Hierarchy for Cubicle Warriors.” You can sign up by clicking here.

2011 was a stressful year in the world of work. We can learn from that and resolve to make it better in 2012.

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