Standing Out
Recently, I’ve been feeling like a small fish in a big pond. Throw in working from home and projects being on hold, and I felt that I needed to come up with a new game plan to help me advance in my career. It can feel a little daunting to prove yourself, but here are five actions that I’ve been taking to set myself apart from the crowd.
Develop a new skill: Work might be a little slow at the moment, but that doesn’t mean you need to twiddle your thumbs waiting for something to fall in your lap. Take this opportunity to learn a new skill. Find some webinars, tutorials, and mentors to teach you how to do something new. Maybe you can learn how to use modeling software. Maybe you can become the expert on ice loads (because I can’t find anyone who knows enough about ice loads). Maybe you can work toward licensure. (If you’re thinking about taking your professional engineering exam, check out my P.E. series!) Whatever skill you end up putting into your toolbox, you’ll be better equipped to dazzle your colleagues.
Get Involved: There are probably several groups within the company you can join. It could be a party planning committee or a Young Professionals group. You could even start your own group if you’re up for it. Just putting yourself out there and getting in the room with new people can help develop your network within the company. This can be especially effective if you work in a company that work shares between different offices. Developing relationships with people in different offices within your extracurricular activities can lead to being brought onto future projects with your new work friends.
Create Tools/Templates: Another thing you can do in your downtime is to create templates to improve your workflows. (If you’re thinking about creating some word templates, check out this post for some tips!) Recently I developed two tools to improve workflows for everyone. One tool takes the pile inspection field data from excel and automatically plots the pile plan into AutoCAD. Another is a mathcad sheet that calculates concrete anchor capacities per ACI-318. Both of these will save time on future projects because the work is already built into these tools and the quality control review time is also reduced to inputs only. It takes a little creativity but with some upfront work, you can make it simpler and faster to do your tasks.
Market Yourself: Try taking the time to market yourself within the company. Linking back to developing a new skill or creating tools/templates, you can use this work to advertise yourself. If you learn a new skill that could be helpful to everyone, create a presentation to teach others what you know. If you create a tool that could help others on your team, host a “lunch & learn” to show people how to use it. You could also plaster your name on your tools/templates so anyone who uses them will know that you are the creator. Signing your name to your work and skill set in this way allows you to showcase your skills with some oomph. People are typically more impressed by action than lip service. So go out there and show off what you can do.
Positive Networking: The above points focus on internal development, but we should also talk about your external network. Take some time to reach out to clients, colleagues, and other people in your external network. You could reach out with a friendly email to check-in. I recommend reaching out individually (mass emails are tacky) with just a light positive message. It doesn’t even need to be work related. You’re just trying to remind people that you exist, so that you’ll be at the forefront of their minds when a new opportunity pops up. I also think that during hard times such as these, it’s helpful to give people a bit of free advice (while being mindful of liability). People may not have the cash flow to be building s*** right now, but you could give some general advice to any problems they might be facing. The person that helped them out when things were tough will likely be the person they reach out to when things are back to normal.