Managing Your Career in 2006

Welcome to 2006. While planning and managing projects over the next 12 months, don't forget to do the same for your career. It requires the same consideration and follow-up as any other project and you must take the initiative to actively manage it. Here are seven suggestions to help you:

Record a Daily Accomplishment

At the end of each day write down one accomplishment and a note explaining its significance. You won't have a huge achievement every day but small actions like choosing a vendor or escalating an issue add up to significant accomplishments. The key to this is aligning your work with departmental and company goals and interpreting the value it adds to the organization. I use a spreadsheet for this because it allows me to do custom sorts and filters to identify accomplishments for my performance review. My spreadsheet has a date column on the left and the top row has fields for each project, my daily accomplishment and the significance of the work: how it cut costs, met a milestone, etc. I also track non-project items like "Continuing Education" and "Leadership" so I can cite specific examples during my review. Define the categories to match your culture and evaluation process and I highly recommend using an automatic reminder to prompt you to make the daily entry.

Keep Your Resume 80% Current

Have the basic content in place - past job history, current position and some recent accomplishments - but leave that last 20 percent undone and use it to customize your resume for the specific position you are seeking. Use the accomplishments you log each day as a personal "resume topics generator" to identify items most relevant to the job you are applying for and move them to your resume. This will help make that final 20 percent of content fit the job description as much as possible.

"Do-it-Yourself" Mentoring

Any formal mentoring programs left that have survived budget cuts tend to be focused on new hires. Once your career has started, you'll have to find two or three people you trust and meet with them on a regular basis to discuss career issues. There are two keys to this. The first is finding the right people in your network who are willing to discuss your career and provide advice. The second is finding a balance between a formal and an informal approach. I meet with two contacts about six times a year to discuss our industry, our recent successes and failures, local and regional career news and our personal lives. We are able to balance personal and professional needs and add value to each other's careers without the bureaucracy of agendas and action items.

Professional Organizations

Join at least one professional organization and attend at least half of the meetings for the next year. If you can attend more often, do it. If you are in a professional organization and are inactive, resign. Stop paying dues and getting mail and either join a different group you are passionate about or stay home. If you stay home, don't expect too much if you lose your job and show up at a meeting to start networking. Which brings us to�

Networking

Forget the "I will meet 50 new contacts" stuff. Identify two people you would like to meet and try to build a relationship with them. Introduce yourself or find a mutual acquaintance to introduce you, and then build rapport by having lunch, sending an article on a topic that interests them or asking for advice. (Be sincere if you seek advice.). Most people reach the end of the year without intentionally increasing their contacts. Randomly meeting a good contact is great, but search out and meet two new contacts this year - and you'll be ahead of the pack.

Clean Out Your Network

In this age of information overload, eliminate unnecessary contacts. "Unnecessary" is a subjective term, but a good rule of thumb is the same one used for clothing: if it's been longer than one year, throw it out. Eliminating outdated contacts removes the obligation to stay in touch with people that no longer add value to your network. If you've been out of touch, you are probably no longer a help to them either, so remove them and make room for new contacts.

Do It Your Way

Bring your own style to career management. For some people, a networking database means entries in an online software program; for others, it's a business card file. Know what works for you and do it your way. But do it. Don't trust your livelihood to anyone else, because no one - your boss, your human resources department or your company - cares about your career. Managing your career is one project you have to do on your own.