Essentially, leads to new jobs come from networking, which you should have been doing since college; headhunters or job sites focused on your specialty.

Jump-starting your career takes a certain amount of introspection and preparation. As you know, help is readily available for learning the technical aspects of work life, and most people are not shy about asking for it.

Except for those individuals who are born always knowing the right thing to do or say, most people find the softer stuff more difficult to master and ask for help about. Listening carefully to your conversations with managers, co-workers, staff and clients is invaluable in gaining awareness of how they perceive you. If you want to change their perceptions, there are steps you can take.

It is immensely useful to observe the ways other leaders behave. Thinking about yourself in that light, you can evaluate why you may not have been recognized for promotion before or singled out by headhunters. When you are ready to make adjustments in the behaviors that may be inhibiting your progress, you might think the intervention of a mentor, personal coach or therapist is the way to go.

But there is a simpler alternative. It requires deep recognition of the effective behavior of others, and the realization that you must make them your own. This will enable you to manage yourself and your interactions with others only positively. When you make the commitment to jump-start your career, to move into a position of more responsibility in your current company or to position yourself to be attractive to a new one, you will need to take stock of your evolution as a person and as a professional. You will want to discover where you've been and where you want to go.

Are You a Leader?
A formal performance review might be the time to focus your boss or the board on your needs. No formal performance review process? Ask for one. Self-promotion by volunteering to accomplish a goal set by others or spearheading a new initiative should be among ongoing activities.

A portfolio is a great way to demonstrate your design accomplishments. Most people think of a portfolio as a tool with which to interview for a new job. It is that, too, but to get ahead in your present company, I'm suggesting you use one to illustrate your stories in the review of your design leadership and other types of contributions you've made.

Even if you are in a management position and rarely take pen to paper, what your team, studio or division has accomplished is the result of your leadership, and the content of the portfolio can demonstrate it. Your narrative can also describe the philosophy with which you approach the work, the process you used to get from here to there, your finessing of cost and time management to make your jobs increasingly profitable and how your relationship with the client led to an increased scope of work. If you've not been gathering portfolio material to demonstrate all of the above, it's never too late to start.

Here are some portfolio formats:

 ·  A traditional ring binder containing photos of built or manufactured projects; design concepts and media coverage, if any.
 ·  A laptop with similar content to the binder as well as other materials that are best presented digitally.
 ·  Access to your Web site on a laptop, if the site navigates quickly, showing one image per page; be sure there's an Internet connection in the meeting room.
 ·  A few small files of digital samples that can be sent with descriptive information when job hunting in other geographic areas. What about resumes that will survive the delete button? Reading resumes online is tedious, but no one reads snail-mailed ones anymore. Some tips:
 ·  It must grab the viewer in the first paragraph or two or you're dead meat.
 ·  The old-fashioned kind - listing employment in reverse chronological order, and stating your function/title and dates of engagement - is the easiest for the online viewer to absorb.
 ·  Briefly describe the former employer if it's not well-known - a 30-person architectural firm, a privately held office furniture company with manufacturing in Turkey, and so on.
 ·  Talk about your accomplishments in each position; for example, "developed a new business that grew from $5 million to $12.5 million in its first year while adding only two in staff." Or, "developed new line of furniture for the hospitality market, garnering design awards, media recognition and a new, $20 million division for the company."
 ·  Describe your jobs to inform, set you apart from the competition and stimulate interest and action.
 ·  Provide dates or the reader will think you have something to hide.
 ·  Customize your emphasis of particular accomplishments to suit the needs of each job opportunity.
 ·  Use simple language and provide concise reasons for actions.

Advice about finding a new job is available in many books as well as online. Essentially, leads to new jobs come from networking, which you should have been doing since college; headhunters or job sites focused on your specialty. Other sources can be a company's Web site; direct contact with potential employers after learning of someone being promoted, retiring or moving on; an expansion or getting new projects; or simply reaching out to a company and describing how you can meet their needs.

Are You Any Good?
How do you rate your performance? Need to brush up on anything? Some ways to stay sharp include:

 ·  Maintaining regular dialogue with other senior management, clients and customers so there are no surprises.
 ·  Developing a design group or department culture that attracts the best creative, technical and administrative staff critical to executing outstanding work.
 ·  Developing and refining creative processes and systems to enable development and execution of outstanding design.
 ·  Producing estimates and budgets, being frugal, exceeding profit targets and adhering to schedules.
 ·  Initiating and integrating responses to changing conditions.
 ·  Collaborating with other specialists in the firm and with vendors critical to the success of the work.
 ·  Building customer and client relationships for add-on projects, selling more products or networking to new clients.
 ·  Participating in new business development, as well as providing compelling visual presentations to assist your firm's sales and marketing specialists.
 ·  Highlighting product or project innovation for use by marketing communications, ad agency, public relations or merchandising.

Evaluating your own performance provides ammunition for discussions about promotion and interviews for a new position.

Do You Support Client Goals?
A design leader understands what drives internal and external clients, and their business and marketing strategies. He or she develops visions of the future, using creative design strategy development and execution to bring the strategies to life.

This person also:

 ·  Works with the research provided and does some on his or her own.
 ·  Understands and responds to customer/ user needs.
 ·  Is on top of trends affecting his or her own company and the clients'.
 ·  Assembles a team passionate about achieving client goals.
 ·  Instills confidence in clients and customers.


RitaSue Siegel is founder and president of RitaSue Siegel Resources, an Aquent company. For more information, call 212-682-2100 or visit www.ritasue.com.