As you make your new year’s resolutions, you may want to think of a few as it relates to your career resolutions. Considering you spend a good amount of your waking hours at work, it’s important that you are satisfied with your work and how you feel about your career.

Self-Promotion

Sharing your accomplishments is something most people feel uncomfortable with. Having said that, it’s an important part of moving ahead in your career. Management doesn’t always have an opportunity to see your individual contributions. They want to know who’s contributing to the company’s success.

If you have aspirations to move ahead, self-promotion is critical. It doesn’t mean you have to brag or minimize your fellow coworkers successes. It just means you should be more aware of communicating the things you are proud of. One of the best ways to showcase your talents to the leadership team is to volunteer for a high profile project. It will demonstrate initiative and it will also give you the opportunity to show your stuff so to speak. Typically, these key initiatives provide progress reports to leadership. This gives you a chance to be more visible to the key decision makers. Make sure you are presenting your successes to leadership, identifying some of the challenges and how your team overcame them.

Relationship Building

Networking is essential to career building so sharpening your skills in this area should be a part of your strategy. Building relationships internally is as important as branching out and expanding your external network. So much within organizations is team based. Having a strong team of coworkers that wants you to do well is key. Collaboration will help in finding creative solutions, driving projects forward and your ability to shine. Networking externally will make you more visible. If a great opportunity comes along, they just may throw your name in the hat.

Continuous Learning

Is there a new skill you are interested in learning? Are you being challenged at work or has it become a routine you are comfortable with? The worst thing we can do is to stop learning and growing. There are a number of cost effective classes out there that you can take advantage of. Sharpening your skills is also important if you job situation changes. We never know when a company will move in another direction, move to another city or shift operations to a different country. Achieving your career resolutions will help you be more marketable in the future.

Goals

Throughout the year, take an honest look at how you are doing toward meeting your annual goals and objectives. Is there something you are falling short on? Do you need help? Did you reach out to your manager for guidance? Touching base with your manager for some direction is critical. Don’t wait until the end of the year to tell someone you needed help or didn’t understand something. That is typically not received well. When the next promotion comes along, this will not work in your favor.

Being committed to sharpening your skills and establishing career resolutions for the New Year is something that should take priority. LinkedIn is a great platform to promote those newly acquired skills. Make sure you have a strong LinkedIn profile as you build your network and expand your skills.