How to Self-Promote Successfully at Work
It’s no secret that in order to move forward and progress in your career, you must self-promote. For most people, the thought of self-promoting their achievements and capabilities feel pretentious, self-indulgent and egotistical. However, over the past few years attitudes towards self-promotion have begun to change, with many realising the importance of promoting themselves to fast-track their careers.
The reality is that we all rely on some degree of self-promotion. Whether you want to get a promotion at work, showcase new skills to your manager or start your own business. You need to make people aware of you and your abilities. While we’d like to think that your work speaks for itself, the fact is that usually, we have to announce the success of our work to gain any recognition or credibility.
5 tips to successfully self-promote
When self-promoting there is a fine line between showcasing your achievements and coming across as arrogant and self-indulgent employee. If you follow our 5 top tips below you will be able to successfully self-promote yourself to achieve your goals.
1) Exceed all expectations and targets
Every employee when working in a job they enjoy will want to impress their boss, that goes without saying. Performing well and exceeding all expectations and targets is the most evident way to make an impression on your boss, whilst elevating your profile across the rest of the business. This is essentially the part where you let your work talk for you, so take pride in what you do and always ask yourself, could it be better?
2) Communicate your Achievements
As I said your work doesn’t always speak for you, you need to seize opportunities to announce the great work you’re doing. You should never be embarrassed to share your success with your boss and colleagues.
There are tactful ways and not so tactful ways to get your message across to your boss and colleagues. Don’t print off your results and start putting them up around the office or put a copy on your boss’s desk. If you’re receiving positive praise from a colleague or client, then try to loop your boss in the email chain, or if you gained some valuable insight on a project whilst achieving great results, forward on to your team and boss to highlight the insight, but also include the positive praise.
3) Help promote others
Sometimes, it can be awkward when you’re blowing your own horn. A good way to overcome this is to use other people’s opinions about you to strengthen your work. By actively promoting the success of your colleagues, this will make them more willing to reciprocate this when you perform well on a task or project.
4) Benchmark yourself
What is a tangible way to measure your performance within a business? To benchmark it against colleagues doing similar work or against competitors. Keep track of internal and external competitors and use it to highlight the contrast between you and others. Prepare a monthly report to highlight your achievement against others, this helps to make your self-promotion more objective and less self-indulgent. Obviously when comparing to colleagues don’t name any names, that will discredit your good work very quickly.
5) Invest in yourself
A fantastic way to highlight to your boss how keen you are to progress and excel in your role is to invest in your continued personal development. Your company might only have a limited, or non-existent budget for your learning and development, however, there are numerous free methods to build on your knowledge and skill set.
Getting yourself along to industry events or finding free online courses are great ways to start. You could also request to shadow a colleague in another department.
What’s Next?
You will only self-promote yourself and your accomplishments if you value your job and want to progress within the company. If you’re unhappy in your current role or you’re unemployed, then let us find you a job where you want to shout to the heavens how great you’re doing.
Check out our latest jobs in Peterborough or register with us to see what next steps you can take in your career.
