Headhunters work with those who have already differentiated themselves from the crowd in the marketplace. People with unique sets of skills command high prices and are much sought after.
On the other hand, when you are much lower in the pecking order the chances are you are seen as simply being one of the crowd, one of the several or many people who performs a particular function. Your mission is to stand out from the rest and to make sure that you are known by name. How do you do this? By volunteering, delivering and being the ‘go to’ person.
The volunteer is the first one at the meeting who puts their hand up when work is about to be assigned. Management really doesn’t enjoy having to pressurize people into doing tasks: by volunteering you take their pressure away and they notice you for it. However, it is not enough to volunteer – you must also deliver! That means not only completing a task in time, on budget, but means going that extra step of doing it with style! If it is a presentation, do it in colour (if budgets permit). If it is a written article, spell-check it, and double check paragraphs and punctuation, so it will not come back to you for corrections. However, a word of warning: only volunteer for tasks which are part of your agreed goals and objectives. Otherwise you may do a good job and have it count against you when your manager asks you why you were wasting your time on unnecessary tasks instead of focusing on what you had been assigned!
Finally, be the ‘go to’ person for a particular skill. Whether it is how to write a project plan, how to access some of the more obscure functions in Excel, or even public holidays in thirty different countries, develop a skill which will have the people in your department coming to you for help and advice. Management will soon notice the fact that you are a subject matter expert.
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