Articles and Presentations

CSCMP Supply Chain Comment January/February 2005

Assess Your Career in the New Year— What's Your Value to Your Industry? (Part 1)
by Don Jacobson

A new year typically is a time for self-evaluation. New Year's Resolutions are stereotypical in their quest for a better life, a better career, a better you. The first decision is whether you will seek to change or improve whatever you feel may not be ideal in your life right now. This is not the time or place to discuss your personality, your choice of friends, or that latest wardrobe change. However, we do want to talk to you about your career--more so about your positioning in your company and the industry.

First, let's investigate your current situation and really look at what your true value is to your current employer. This will help you to know if it is time for you to ask for a raise or to hide under your desk. These are key things for you to honestly measure.

• Your skill sets: Take a good hard look at what your talents are with regard to the needs of the company. Don't just take note of those skills that you use on a daily basis, but those skills that the company takes advantage of occasionally. Also list those skills you have that are rarely or ever used by you in your current position. This might be your talent for excellent project coordination or negotiating for improved pricing or response from vendors. Just because this skill is not currently a part of your job description does not mean that it cannot be used to highlight your importance to the organization.
• Your task list: Meticulously scour your job description. If you don't have one or have never seen it, contact your human resources department and ask for it. (If it doesn't exist, write one.) Honestly, rate each duty and responsibility the company says belongs to your position, as to whether you do that in a manner that is: Excellent; Good; Fair; Needs Improvement; or Needs More Training. Take some time and review your day-to-day to-do lists and see if you do more than the official job requires. If so, write these in and rate them as well. It might be worthwhile to take a look at the job descriptions for a similar position in other comparable companies. You might actually be responsible for what is normally the scope of two people in another organization. (This would certainly be important information when you are asking for a raise or to get an assistant.)
• Your credentials: Pull out your resume--not because we are going to suggest you find another job, but because it is probably the one place where you have all the information about what/where/when you received your degrees, certificates, and awards. Look at it with the eye of someone who hires others. Perhaps you need an educational update. Mark down all the conferences and seminars you've attended. See if there is a program online or at a university near your office or home, where you might take some classes for a graduate certificate (shorter than a degree program because it focuses on concentration courses only). Study and take discipline specific certification exams, such as APICS certification, as well as bumping up your education in those other areas of management such as accounting, project management, or human resource management. We can tell you from personal experience and the experience of others, you are not too old to go back to school. In addition, after all the experience you have had in the work world, you will find that school is much easier than when you were a mere twenty-something. There is a ton of knowledge in your head already and a lot of this coursework will permit you to express what you really already know and get credit for it.
• Your contributions: Find the tangible proof of how the organization has really benefited from you and all the great work that you do. Pull up statistics on money saved, man-hours reduced, greater productivity, whatever you can find in cold, hard documentation. Compare your numbers with the numbers from last year (you improved over your own work) or numbers from years ago when that other person was sitting in your office. Whatever it takes to document the accomplishments you have made for them.

Also check out the detailed job description of a position you would like to hold in the future with this company (your next promotion). Be attentive to what you can do that may have gone unnoticed by your management. Once you have begun the process of evaluating yourself, you will be able to design a plan for your campaign for the next step in your career.

Editor's note: This is the first in a two-part series on managing your career by.

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