2 Tips to live and work by.

Do Your Job Well

This goes without saying, but what some people may not realize is that it’s important to not only meet expectations but exceed them. Understand your role and responsibilities and do more than what is expected.  Not all roles, entry-level or not, are thrilling every day and most people are anxious to get that promotion, but first you need to master the basics and demonstrate your willingness to work hard and show results in your current role.

Develop a Specialty

Know your strengths and weaknesses, and identify a need in your business or industry that can leverage those strengths. If you’re not sure what your strengths are, use an assessment tool to discover them. This specialty should become a part of your brand. It will help you identify opportunities down the road as well as make you stand out to be identified for opportunities.

Free Career Assessment Tool

Are you good at public speaking?

Work on your public speaking and presentation skills

If you solve an IT problem and no one notices, have you really solved it?

Public speaking is one of the most important skill that any employee can develop if he or she wants career advancement.

The person who gets noticed at a meeting or a conference is always one that has presented well. Other presenters may have known their subject inside and out or presented interesting ideas. But if they cannot present that message well, they won’t be noticed, and their message will suffer, too.

Presentation is the No. 1 skill to get you ahead. It’s not enough to know something well and do something well. You have to present it well, too. If you can present to your coworkers or to clients, you will stand out from the crowd and do well in your career.

Take ownership of your career…

If you want to succeed in your career, you have to take ownership of both your triumphs and your failures.

Celebrate your triumphs, analyze them, and learn how you can emulate them and build on them in the future.

You need to take ownership of your failures as well, accepting responsibility for them without letting them drag you down and learning everything that you can from the mistakes you make.

Many times, failure is a much more effective teacher than success, and most if not all of the world’s most successful people would not be where they are today if they did not accept their mistakes and learn from them.