canadian headhunter

Visibility - Again.

There was an article in the Globe and Mail today about a new trend called "bearhugging" in which:
organizations and leaders of teams identify the members of their teams who are critical to their success and acknowledge their value with perks such as stock plans, promotions, special projects and training.

Supposedly this is a good way to keep people. I don't know why this should be news - it seems like common sense that you should try to find wasy to hang on to your best talent. Even your average talent is worth hanging onto since they know the company better than an average performer from outside.

What caught my eye was a bit at the end that listed some ways that you can leverage your career by increasing your visibility. Here are some of them:

Stay aware of changes in your profession. Executives can expect to move through six or more jobs on their way to the top.

Make sure you are active in your professional organization.

Raise your visibility outside your own organization both professionally and in the community.

Get published or be interviewed in professional journals.

Do public speaking at industry functions.

Make sure you are known by recruiters.

This all sounds very familiar to me and if you have been a long time reader to our blog it will be to you too because I did two posts on the subject last year. They were called What Kind of Candidate are You Part II - Visibile or Invisible? and Increasing Your Visibility II

Here's some of my advice from those posts

"... firstly start attending conferences and seminars. Sometimes attendees lists are found on the Internet by enterprising recruiters and we are typically more interested in the attendees than the high flying speakers.

Secondly and most important: to what professional associations do you belong? No matter what field you are in there is some type of professional association (sometimes several). Just joining one gets you on the membership directory and headhunters love membership directories!!

But don't just stop at joining an association - get involved. Get on committees help out in events. If you are on the association executive or a committee you will probably be listed on a the website and thus you will be more visible!"

I think maybe the Globe secretly reads our blog. I have some more to say on this subject but in the interest of brevity I will leave it for another post next week.

In case I forget though remind me to write about how the new privacy laws are killing your career.

Trust me it is that serious.