These days, it’s not enough to be good at what you do. More than ever, it helps to be recognised for what you are capable of. After all, the opportunity to get that dream job or to climb the career ladder will be possible only if your skills and experience gets noticed in the first place.
Here are a few pointers for effectively marketing your skill set:
1.) Make Sure Your Skills Are Relevant
The first step to marketing your skills successfully is to make sure you have relevant skills to start with. Because many fields are currently moving at a rapid pace, the skills you’ve learned a decade ago may no longer be applicable in the current context.
Thankfully, Singaporean professionals enjoy a wide range of options for upskilling and adult education. One of the most popular options for continuing education is SkillsFuture Series short courses sponsored by SkillsFuture Singapore (SSG). Many of the courses on offer are specifically designed to help beginner and veteran professionals understand emerging concepts and hone critical skills related to their industry.
If you’re based in Singapore, make sure to check out the SkillsFuture courses Singapore-based educational institutions currently offer.
2.) Update Your CV Every Year
An outdated CV can give job recruiters and your current managers the wrong impression of your capabilities. Updating your CV each year lets you give your skills and achievements the attention they truly deserve, making it easier to reach for new job opportunities or build a stronger case for promotions and salary increases.
3.) Join Professional Events and Meetups
Regardless of whether it’s for a product or a person, marketing is fundamentally about making human connections. If you’re trying to market your skills, professional events are probably the best place to make these connections.
While they can occasionally be tiresome and full of self-interested people, professional events are still the best place to be recognised not only for your skills but for your authority and your role in your professional community.
By choosing the events you join carefully (or better yet, by creating your own events) you will be better able to gain recognition in the circles that matter for your career.
4.) Learn About Existing and Emerging Marketing Tools
Being able to leverage marketing tools effectively will give you a marked advantage, especially in Singapore’s highly-competitive job market.
While most of us understand the importance of social media platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook, most professionals fail to leverage these platforms to their true potential. Additionally, classic marketing tools such as business cards and building a website for professional contacts are similarly underutilized.
By understanding and applying the current best practices for various online and offline marketing tools, you can spend less effort reaching the people you need. This means that you can spend more time honing your skills and less time convincing others of your worth.
5.) Know Your Niche
While your skill set and experience may be broadly applicable in different industries and markets, the reality is that these are highly contextual. As soon as you start applying what you know in different situations, you are bound to run into some issues that you’ve never considered.
Thus, it’s a good idea to have a good understanding of your specific niche and experience. This will give you an edge over other professionals who could only bring more general approaches to the table.
6.) Mentor Others
If you have the experience, mentoring others is a good way to develop a reputation as a subject matter expert. It can also be a good way for you, as a seasoned professional, to relearn the fundamentals as well as the advanced concepts that you may not have applied consistently. Both of these benefits can go a long way toward developing you as an authority within your field.
7.) Develop Working Relationships with Thought Leaders
It’s not always about how many people you know but who you know. In the social media age, most fields now have thought leaders who set the pace for many others in their discipline.
While thought leaders tend to be experts themselves, they are not always the most knowledgeable in their fields. Rather, they are different from other subject matter experts in that they can communicate effectively their discipline’s concepts to a wider audience.
Associations with thought leaders are now especially important as their influence may potentially give your brand a boost in the communities that matter. By developing good working relationships with established thought leaders in your field, you may significantly increase your own profile in your chosen profession.
8.) Be Likable
Being empathetic, conscientious, and willing to listen will often get you much further than raw competence alone. While impressive CVs win jobs, likability widens your networks and sustainably builds careers.
What’s more, cultivating these human-centric skills is usually of great benefit for both your personal brand marketing and your on-the-job performance.
Virtually every job requires individuals to work with others, often as part of a team that has a greater goal. Being likeable makes it so that other people are more willing to work with you. If you’re just starting, it may even be key to finding a mentor and building a network.
Becoming more likeable is not something that happens overnight. However, by listening more and committing to exercise more empathy with others, you will eventually find your own way to improving your charisma.
Start Cultivating Your Skills
A properly honed and presented skill set can be critical to your ability to move up the career ladder. But while marketing your CV is essential, at some point you will need to live up to its promise.
Taking certification courses such as the SkillsFuture Series is the best way to not only strengthen your CV but also to keep your skills sharp and relevant. Check out SkillsFuture and other adult education courses in Singapore today to get started on the next phase of your career.
