In a culture that prefers to let job titles do the talking, marketing yourself can sometimes feel uncomfortable. Too often job seekers shy away from self-promotion for fear of appearing too “braggy,” overconfident, or unlikeable. Properly marketing yourself at work, however, often leads to improved teamwork, visibility, and advancement opportunities. Understanding how to market yourself at work allows you to capitalize on the experiences and connections you need to achieve your career goals.
Why Marketing Yourself at Work Matters
As a working professional, marketing yourself doesn’t start and end at the job search phase. Yes, self-promotion is an obvious, necessary component of landing a job, but it’s also an important part of achieving growth within an organization. Marketing yourself keeps you memorable, establishes trust, and builds your reputation among your peers. Positively marketing yourself at work triggers favorable memories and associations in the minds of those you’ve impacted – including leaders and those in positions of power – and consequently, can open you up to new opportunities.
Speaking up about your talents, goals, and achievements also allows those around you to benefit from your talent. Employers, clients, and coworkers each own a unique set of problems they encounter on a regular basis. By marketing yourself and your skills in the workplace, you allow others to take notice of and benefit from your expertise. This can be monumentally impactful, especially if the problem you solve belongs to someone who holds the power to promote you. Recognizing your ability to help allows you to multiply your growth potential indefinitely.
Marketing Yourself at Work: How to Establish Trust
When marketing yourself at work, it’s important to follow through. Solidifying trust with your leaders, coworkers, and clients is a vital component of success. Fail to deliver on the promises you made, and you risk losing credibility, connections, and even sometimes the job itself.
Tip One: Honesty – Establish trust by sticking to the truth whenever marketing yourself to others. Never oversell your skills or achievements by bloating figures and facts to make yourself sound better. These little white lies will inevitably land you in a difficult situation should your marketing efforts succeed and result in new opportunities that force you to prove the truth behind your claims.
Tip Two: Consistency – Honor your commitments, show up for those who rely on you, arrive to work on time, and deliver the best work possible, every day. Employers, coworkers, and clients can quickly see through excuses and false promises. Ensure your actions match your words and don’t commit to solutions you cannot deliver.
Tip Three: Transparency – Skip past personal perceptions by sticking with transparent facts and figures when marketing yourself at work. Use metrics to quantify your achievements and showcase your excellence, adaptability, and applicability through key numerical figures and quantifiable facts.
The more honest, consistent, and transparent you are when marketing yourself at work, the greater your chances of building trust among your workplace associates and clients. For example, if a coworker needs assistance with a pivot table, and you’ve expressed in previous interactions a steady understanding of pivot tables, they may likely call on you to assist with their pivot table questions. If you answer their questions with accurate information, swift and consistent attention, and transparent facts about pivot table proficiency, your coworker is likely to walk away from the interaction with a sense of gratitude, appreciation, and trust. They may also be inclined to share their positive experience with others, thereby planting seeds of trust among peers.
Trust is a phenomenal way to build long-term connections and a far-reaching reputation that extends beyond a single position or organization. Actively build a reputation that speaks to your values (like honesty, consistency, and transparency) as an employee, professional, and person by staying clear and true when marketing yourself.
Marketing Yourself at Work: How to Align With Company Goals
There’s a fine line between professionally marketing yourself in the workplace and boasting about yourself to anyone who will listen. Aligning yourself with the needs and goals of those around you keeps your marketing applicable and relevant. Tuning your self-promotion into the goals of your company staunches perceptions around arrogance and instead sparks an attitude of helpfulness.
Research company goals and time your self-promotion alongside current workplace priorities. Use specific language from your company’s mission statement or company values, jot down notes or comments from coworkers in need of assistance, and discuss recent projects with promising results. Nothing is more memorable than offering a solution in moments of dire need; be the person everyone on your team wants to align with by strategically marketing yourself alongside problem-solving techniques and resolution efforts.
Marketing Yourself at Work: Pay It Forward
One of the best things about learning how to market yourself at work is that once you’ve mastered the technique, you organically learn to identify strengths and skills in others. The most important driver of great work is recognition, and since very few of us achieve greatness completely on our own, it’s monumentally important to recognize those who’ve helped you grow as a career professional. Give credit where credit is due and highlight those around you who showcase skills that can help your organization as a whole. You have nothing to lose by crediting those who’ve helped you rise and everything to gain by networking with teammates who can further your organization’s objectives.
Marketing Yourself at Work: Technique Tips
Once you understand the general best practices behind marketing yourself at work, you’re ready to start sharing your skills! Marketing opportunities exist anywhere you interact with another person, be it with a coworker, leader, or client. Make the most of self-promotion opportunities by speaking up whenever possible and appropriate.
- DO volunteer for tasks that speak to your unique strengths.
- DO offer knowledge when someone asks a question or you notice an opening in a troubleshooting conversation.
- DO speak up in meetings, email threads, or work chats when you know you can offer a solution to a problem.
- DO take the time to articulate your strengths and express any desires you have to make the most of your skills during 1:1 meetings, reviews, and work-related functions.
- DO schedule meetings with leaders to share issues you’ve observed and suggest solutions you can provide.
- DON’T interject or override someone else’s job functions.
- DON’T offer to help if you don’t have the capacity or skills to help.
- DON’T create problems simply to solve them.
- DON’T assume your work will speak for itself – use your work as support to spoken and written communication around your strengths.
- DON’T forget – your voice is your strongest, most powerful ally. Own your growth and don’t shy away from professionally expressing your abilities.
Marketing yourself at work grants you infinite access to goal-achieving connections and opportunities. Take the first step by investing in a professionally-written resume, cover letter, and LinkedIn profile. I’ll help you fine-tune your achievements using metrics-driven resume techniques so you can walk into your next review meeting or interview with an array of talking points, experiences, and proof of worth. Don’t let fear of self-promotion get in the way of your career goals; connect with me here and together let’s identify the accomplishments and hard-earned skills that speak to your unique potential and limitless value.