Eleven Key Ideas that Will Optimize Your Professional Profile

Original Spanish version published in elcomercio.pe on June 17, 2020

At this critical juncture, many organizations are adapting to the situation while others are reinventing themselves in response. Similarly, we need to optimize our professional profiles and prepare ourselves assertively without delay in order to gain a niche in this new work environment.

I would like to share 11 ideas that we need to keep in mind so that we can optimize our professional profiles successfully:

1. Clearly identify our skills and abilities. Without wasting any time, we must try to close the gaps between the skills we have and the ones we lack so that we can truly be up to date in our skills when contending with organizational reordering.
2. Focus on developing the human skills, the soft skills, in most demand, such as resilience, empathy, flexibility, adaptability, leadership to inspire and mobilize, creativity, teamwork, oral and written communication, and assertiveness, as well impeccable ethics and values.
3. Dare to do and learn new things. Get out of our comfort zones, put our egos aside and take the risk of making mistakes several times without throwing in the towel. It is essential to learn faster today, and to neglect this is very harmful, especially in this digital world.
4. Keep our curriculums up to date. Our curriculums help us to monitor the way our careers are progressing as well as to record our achievements, our quantified results and the value we add. Updating our CVs only when looking for work is a mistake for which we will pay dearly.
5. Have a business view of the services we provide. Understanding and managing the daily sale of our professional services as our own best business –challenging and lucrative– imposes on us that sense of urgency that we need to keep moving forward and not come to a standstill.
6. Know what our differentiating features are. Faced with so much competition, it is vital that we know and make evident –modestly and without arrogance– our differentiators. For this, it is imperative that we strengthen these differentiators and know how to convey them with warmth and authenticity.
7. Be vibrant and have good spirits. Faced with so many people who are negative or have been overwhelmed by the situation, our willingness to help, our enthusiasm for challenges, our optimism and a genuine positive attitude are our best business card.
8. Cultivate trust and reputation. Given our current state of affairs of limited resources, our good conduct will be increasingly visible, transparent and valued. Trust, correctness, and loyalty are and will be the very essence of our reputation.
9. Have an optimized profile in our social networks. The virtual world is not a parallel world with a different set of rules. Before posting on networks, it is always advisable to think about whether that publication is consistent with who we are and what we want to show about ourselves.
10. Focus on contributing. The quality of the results we produce and the speed with which we work will show whether our services are necessary, relevant, or in demand.
11. Expand our network of trust. It is authentic, genuine, and disinterested relationships that help the “word of mouth” regarding our reputation and validity to spread positively. And, expanding our network is easier and more efficient today if we do it well by videoconferencing and, ideally, by Zoom.

The new normal is complex and challenging. Our best positive attitude will be decisive for us to adapt well, improve our professional profile, and move forward faster without looking back.

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