Is Your Executive Career Management Strategy Setting You up for Success?

Most executives want and need to grow professionally. Executive career success empowers you to maximize your leadership potential and make a bigger impact at work and in life. Unless you commit to this growth, you will become stagnant and never reach your long-term goals.

If you recognize any of these symptoms, it’s time to make some changes in your day-to-day life. Do you have:

• Limited visibility within your organization or the broader industry?
• A lack of investment in mentors, peer relationships or other strategic alliances to accelerate your success?
• Difficulty defining a clear vision for your future?
• A hard time inspiring your team?
• A reluctance to delegate, which leaves you with little time for planning?
• Stress and frustration with work, which spills over into your personal life?
• A plateau that you have reached, where you are unsure how to move forward?

Make A Move

Take whatever steps are necessary to experience greater levels of success and satisfaction.

• Know the market. Work with a specialized recruiting firm and learn from their experience and outlook. Find out which areas are performing exceptionally well and see if your skills are transferable to these areas.
• Become a source. Offer yourself as a resource both online and in person. This includes speaking with search consultants and offering any contacts you think would be useful to them. This is an excellent way to build a two-way networking process. Participate in LinkedIn and other relevant groups, discussions and conversations. Submit articles and other references as added contributions.
• Perfect your resume, CV and online profiles. Keep all your branding metrics focused. Highlight your strengths with numbers so you can gain a competitive edge and quickly demonstrate your core achievements.
• Understand the expectations in today’s evolving marketplace. Retrain and reeducate yourself to match executive job requirements. If you are in an underperforming industry, look to other fields that demand skill sets similar to your own.
• Develop your elevator pitch. Learn to portray your executive profile and strengths in under a minute.
• Prepare to interview well with CAR. A context, action and results (CAR) approach is an effective way to match job requirements to your experience. Have specific examples ready to explain goals and situations, describe the action you took to enact needed change, and then present your measurable positive results.
• Know your executive career path inside out. Be able to discuss every stage of your career progression clearly and confidently.
• Always be networking. Aim to achieve at least one outcome from every networking meeting, whether you share knowledge or arrange to meet again to follow up on an idea. Go above and beyond by starting your own networking group. If you do so online, be the group manager so you have unique access to every contact. Attend trade events. Better yet, offer to speak, moderate or serve on a panel. Become a guest writer in trade publications.

The specialized search consultants at BrainWorks offer unparalleled market intelligence, experience and resources to keep your executive career on track. Among our focus areas are consumer products, CRM and direct marketing, analytics and data science, and digital marketing and e-commerce. Contact us today to learn more.