Five Simple Career Hacks to Jump-Start Your Career Momentum!

Career Momentum is an asset that most professionals ignore, are not aware of, or do not know how to manage. Most do not know that it is a highly fungible commoditycurrencywhen you are making a job change to get the role, salary, and the title you wish in your next job. They also fail to see the impact of their career momentum on how it can influence their perception when they land their next job and their immediate career growth. Career Momentum can be defined as impetus one gains by how your career is making an impact in what you do; it can also be viewed as strength or continuity derived from an initial effort in a strategic way.

Whenever clients come to me seeking to change jobs I first assess their career momentum. How do I do that? I look at the most recent assignments they have had and how they can translate them into bullets that will be on the top of page-one of their rsum. Of course, fashioning a bullet in a right way is critical to its presentation, but once you have the basic raw material to shape a compelling story around your accomplishments it is much easier to frame that presentation to show your career momentum.

When we decide that their career momentum is low or even negativedue to inevitable career setbacksthe first order of business in our engagement is to identify avenues to quickly build that lost momentum. Unless the client is in imminent danger of losing their job or is facing a lay-off our focus shifts from job search strategies to building career momentum and to generate some escape velocity. Those that are unfamiliar with this phrase, it comes from any object rocketed into space that must leave the earths gravitational pull to escape into space and to go on its own, from then on. Without good momentum you cannot generate enough escape velocity to go on your own, based on that initial effort we alluded to in the definition of this phrase.

So, what are some of the quick ways to regain your career momentum and parlay that into the right escape velocity? Here are some hacks that work for most clients:

1. Dont just do your job: Most people do what is assigned to them by their boss. What is assigned to them and doing well in delivering success is mere table stakes for momentum building. If you find a clever way to taking on that challenge and delivering above and beyond (filing for patent or scaling-up that solution for implementing it across the company, as examples) then you have something to write about as a compelling bullet on that assignment.
   If are unable to find something singularly worthy to contribute when you do your assigned task then look around and see what can be done to improve that is important to your workgroup and to you boss. Make a suggestion and show the benefit in clear business or political terms so that your boss can get excited about supporting your doing this task. Either way you now have a rsum bullet that shows initiative and imagination.
2. Preordain that bullet: Most people wait to write their rsum when time comes for them to look for a job. If, instead, you write a bullet in a story-telling format (3-4 lines, not just one line as most do) that captures the result of your task you just took on then you have a roadmap of what the outcome of that task is going to be ahead of time. In most cases if you envision a certain positive outcome ahead of time you are more likely to produce it than just maunder through that task and deliver what comes out in the end.
3. Become visible: Most employees stick to the work that restricts them to their own workgroup and team. Spread your wings and see what adjacent workgroups are doing and see if you can volunteer your time to help their projects. Sometimes, if that helps your own group your manager may allow you to do this time-sharing to bring that benefit of new learning into your own group. Once again, envision the rsum bullet that youll be able to have as a result of this expanded role that you have now assumed. This shows initiative, eagerness to learn new skills, and risk-taking; all good ingredients to build career momentum.
4. Show leadership: In any workgroup there are challenges. Projects get stuck or mired in political shenanigans. In such cases most team memberseven team leaderswait for things to sort themselves out. If you see this in your own workgroup and your project is mired in delays because of such skullduggery, take on the challenge and show some leadership. Approach your boss and tell them how you can navigate through this obstacle and extricate the project to deliver on time. If you are successful you have one heck of strong story and bullet to write on your rsum that will help you regain your momentum.
5. Become a change agent: Most workgroups are in need of change. The change can be stemming from creating new work standards (it is your boss job) to providing new tools to make the workgroup more effective by stamping out drudgery and giving more creative time to team members. In software workgroups test automation is one such avenue. By providing automation tools you can free-up team members time by almost eliminating routine workdrudgeryand using that time to create productive outcomes. Such a success is worth touting about in your rsum as a bullet that shows your initiative.

These are just five momentum hacks that can shift the message of your otherwise banausic rsum and showcase your leadership. Once you have this algorithm down and the right material on your rsum to showcase your momentum you will have much higher level of confidence when you go out for interviews. It is this confidence that will change how you come across to your new hiring manager and will allow you to land the job you want on terms that may surprise you.

Good luck!

About Author

Dilip has distinguished himself as LinkedIn’s #1 career coach from among a global pool of over 1,000 peers ever since LinkedIn started ranking them professionally (LinkedIn selected 23 categories of professionals for this ranking and published this ranking from 2006 until 2012). Having worked with over 6,000 clients from all walks of professions and having worked with nearly the entire spectrum of age groups—from high-school graduates about to enter college to those in their 70s, not knowing what to do with their retirement—Dilip has developed a unique approach to bringing meaning to their professional and personal lives. Dilip’s professional success lies in his ability to codify what he has learned in his own varied life (he has changed careers four times and is currently in his fifth) and from those of his clients, and to apply the essence of that learning to each coaching situation. After getting his B.Tech. (Honors) from IIT-Bombay and Master’s in electrical engineering(MSEE) from Stanford University, Dilip worked at various organizations, starting as an individual contributor and then progressing to head an engineering organization of a division of a high-tech company, with $2B in sales, in California’s Silicon Valley. His current interest in coaching resulted from his career experiences spanning nearly four decades, at four very diverse organizations–and industries, including a major conglomerate in India, and from what it takes to re-invent oneself time and again, especially after a lay-off and with constraints that are beyond your control. During the 45-plus years since his graduation, Dilip has reinvented himself time and again to explore new career horizons. When he left the corporate world, as head of engineering of a technology company, he started his own technology consulting business, helping high-tech and biotech companies streamline their product development processes. Dilip’s third career was working as a marketing consultant helping Fortune-500 companies dramatically improve their sales, based on a novel concept. It is during this work that Dilip realized that the greatest challenge most corporations face is available leadership resources and effectiveness; too many followers looking up to rudderless leadership. Dilip then decided to work with corporations helping them understand the leadership process and how to increase leadership effectiveness at every level. Soon afterwards, when the job-market tanked in Silicon Valley in 2001, Dilip changed his career track yet again and decided to work initially with many high-tech refugees, who wanted expert guidance in their reinvention and reemployment. Quickly, Dilip expanded his practice to help professionals from all walks of life. Now in his fifth career, Dilip works with professionals in the Silicon Valley and around the world helping with reinvention to get their dream jobs or vocations. As a career counselor and life coach, Dilip’s focus has been career transitions for professionals at all levels and engaging them in a purposeful pursuit. Working with them, he has developed many groundbreaking approaches to career transition that are now published in five books, his weekly blogs, and hundreds of articles. He has worked with those looking for a change in their careers–re-invention–and jobs at levels ranging from CEOs to hospital orderlies. He has developed numerous seminars and workshops to complement his individual coaching for helping others with making career and life transitions. Dilip’s central theme in his practice is to help clients discover their latent genius and then build a value proposition around it to articulate a strong verbal brand. Throughout this journey, Dilip has come up with many groundbreaking practices such as an Inductive Résumé and the Genius Extraction Tool. Dilip owns two patents, has two publications in the Harvard Business Review and has led a CEO roundtable for Chief Executive on Customer Loyalty. Both Amazon and B&N list numerous reviews on his five books. Dilip is also listed in Who’s Who, has appeared several times on CNN Headline News/Comcast Local Edition, as well as in the San Francisco Chronicle in its career columns. Dilip is a contributing writer to several publications. Dilip is a sought-after speaker at public and private forums on jobs, careers, leadership challenges, and how to be an effective leader.

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