Chapter 15
Ten Ways to Advance Your Career with Writing
In This Chapter
Using writing to improve relationships
Elevating your value to employers, present and future
Inspiring yourself with clearer goals and pathways
Good writing helps you succeed. Despite the business world’s growing need for effective communications, good writers are ever more difficult to find. Therefore they stand out. This chapter gives you ten specific ways to use your writing skill to advantage.
Use Everything You Write to Build Your Professional Image
Messages that are well thought out, written, edited and proofed do more than accomplish your immediate goals. Over time, they add up to a powerful tool for creating the professional image you want. Granted, most people aren’t conscious of why they find you credible, authoritative and convincing. But they credit you with all these qualities and more.
To capture this respect, use your best writing efforts on every message, not just the important ones like proposals and applications. Plan even the simplest email and draft it with attention to the person who’ll read it and your purpose in writing. Review and rewrite as needed, and proofread meticulously. Be sure it’s clear, concise, and to the point.
This approach applies even when you’re messaging friends and peers. Work and play increasingly blend and overlap; your buddies may be sources of referrals, recommendations and connections. Maintaining good English when you text is harder, but try to be clear and unambiguous at least.
Write a Great Elevator Speech – and Use It
Introducing yourself well at meetings, industry events, and public occasions can open doors magically. To craft an effective 15-second pitch, focus closely in on your own value to the people you want to meet. Think about what makes you special or unique in your field. Chapter 10 takes you through the entire process.
This mini-speech should say who you are, what you do, and why the person you’re talking to should care. Most successful business people invest considerable thought in a strong message that sounds natural and memorable. They see their messages as works in progress, worthy of constant fine-tuning.
After you own a message you like, take it on the road. Find out where prospects, investors, collaborators, or anyone else you want to connect with get together. In-person networking is irreplaceable, despite all the new communication channels. If you’re under 35, you may see few of your cohorts showing up and are likely to find yourself welcomed with open arms.
Write a Long-Range Career Plan for Yourself
If you don’t know where you want to be next year, or in five years, or ten, use the power of writing to catalyze your planning.
First write down what you’d most like to achieve in your chosen timeframe. Then look at where you are now, and write down the steps that can get you where you want to go. You may for example need to meet specific people, acquire training, take on certain assignments, or find intermediary jobs that qualify you.
A big advantage of planning this way is that you recognize opportunities you ordinarily overlook. You can also make better decisions because you know what contributes to your goal and what can sidetrack you.
Writing it all down is essential. Otherwise, your thoughts revolve around the same old paths, and moving ahead just seems overwhelming. Expect to make adjustments along the way as you refine your journey.
Write an Ad for Your Dream Job
Another good way to channel your thinking about the future is to create an ad for your ultimate job. Put yourself in the employer’s place and figure out what he is looking for. Describe the job in detail and list every relevant responsibility, credential and personal quality you can think of. Going through this process shows you how well you currently match up and what you need to work on.
Go a step further and write a cover letter as if you were applying for the job right now. Highlight the experience and capabilities that match up. Thinking this through clarifies what you want and the opportunities to look for. Flip to Chapter 7 for more insights into compelling cover letters, and Chapter 9 for ideas on how to distill your essential value.
Go Out of Your Way to Thank People
The busier people feel, the more they forget to be polite, let alone appreciative. One of the easiest ways to make a good impression is simply to say thank you, in writing, when someone does you a good turn. She may have given you a referral or reference, introduced you to someone or tipped you off to an opportunity. Or she may have interviewed you for a job.
A graceful thank you helps you stand out. It establishes general good feeling, gives you an edge and puts you in line for more favors.
To write a good thank you, think about what the other person values hearing. Be specific. For example: ‘Your virtual introduction helped me understand the profession better, and also, how to prepare myself for it.’ For extra points, try hand-written notes. People really appreciate them. See Chapter 7 for more ideas.
Take Notes to Control the Conversation
Write things down. Later, you may be the only person who knows what actually happened. People forget quickly when they have a lot going on.
Most people duck the role of note-taker at meetings, but it holds interesting potential. Use your notes to articulate the main points and future actions in a form suitable for sharing – an outline with bullets or numbered points is often sufficient. Your written notes make you the one who recaps what occurred and what decisions were made. Taking this action role brings you kudos and puts you in the loop for new information.
Taking notes on an everyday basis also pays dividends. An assistant manager I once worked with routinely used a notebook to jot down a line or two for every reasonably important conversation and event. She was able to flip through her notes and say, ‘Actually, that document came in on January 17th’ or ‘We talked about that on April 3rd and you agreed to do it this way.’ She was hard to argue with. But take care not to use this tactic on your boss too much.
Use Messages to Stay in Touch and Build Relationships
Many written messages today help you interact with people you don’t yet know – and may never meet. Consciously use business email and correspondence to personalize your messages, as appropriate.
Get personal gradually. A first message should be fairly formal. If your correspondent mentions a vacation or a personal milestone, perhaps inquire about that in subsequent correspondence. Or fall back on the weather, as you do in face-to-face conversation.
Take care when interacting with other cultures, however. Most expect more formality than you may be accustomed to, but may see relationships as prerequisite to business. So write with formality but be sensitive to the other person’s cues – like moving to a first name basis, for example, or inquiring about the family. Chapters 13 and 14 offer a number of suggestions.
Also use writing to maintain contacts and connections after you establish them. Actively build a network of colleagues, peers, friends, former co-workers and even supervisors. You’ll forge unexpected strengths.
Write First-Rate Blog Posts, Comments and Tweets
A growing number of employers and recruiters look to the Internet for their hiring these days. They’re interested in people who show the ability to think and articulate their ideas well, use good judgment and are comfortable with social media and other online tools.
See everything you post as a chance to showcase your skills. Your online presence lets people evaluate you almost as if they’re eavesdropping.
Take care with your conversations, comments, and tweets. (See Chapter 11 and 16 for specific advice.) Avoid criticizing anyone else or exhibiting bad temper or hasty judgment. Above all, take care with your writing! Don’t come across as semi-literate and careless. Think your ideas through. Express them well. Edit out misspellings, bad grammar and anything that reveals you to be less than the person you want to be.
Nothing is ever really erased. At least one website is devoted to tweets that were deleted by the important people who wrote them!
Know How to Explain Your Value
Always be prepared to tell other people what you contribute, the value of your department’s work, and your organization’s goals and/or accomplishments. Think your message through and write it down, even if you expect to deliver it verbally when called for.
When applying for jobs, you must be able to articulate your value to your prospective employer. Today keeping a job is often as much of a challenge as getting a new one. Chances are pretty good that a current or new supervisor may ask you to explain your work, which probably means justifying your salary when budget cuts loom. Know the answer by working it out in writing.
Tackle the challenge similarly when explaining your department’s work. And write up your best understanding of your organization’s goals beyond the obvious one of making money. Think about how the company plans to do that: Expand? Cut costs? Improve service? Raise public perception?
When you align with company goals you do a better job – and you may well be noticed. To better engage employees with their ‘mission’ is a big driver for most organizations.
Profile Your Supervisor for a Better Relationship
Creating a written, detailed profile of the person you report to can show you how to communicate with him better, ask for what you need and perform to higher expectations. The process, which I describe in detail in Chapter 3, also helps you better support the boss and make him look good – always an underlying part of any job.
Create a list of applicable factors, such as: management style; communication style; how he makes decisions (Ideas? Statistics? Impact on people); values and priorities (Efficiency? Teaming? Bottom line? New technology?)
Think also about his hot buttons, positioning in the company, biggest problems, ambitions, what he cares about, what keeps him up at night. You may be surprised at how much you know and can intuit, and how much the information helps you when you want something or wish to contribute more and be recognized. More than once, I’ve seen people turn an entire relationship around after creating a profile because they better understood the boss and acted on this knowledge.