Many tech pros would rather crawl under a convenient rock than engage in rigorous self-promotion. That’s totally natural: not everyone likes tooting their own horn, even if they’re more than qualified to do so. But remaining invisible to colleagues, bosses, and respective employers could end up harming your career. If you want to advance to new and better positions—or just receive due credit for your awesome projects—you’ll need to promote what you’ve done. How can you do that without coming off as arrogant or conceited? It’s all in what you choose to focus on.
Emphasize Your Impact
When communicating with others about your accomplishments, make sure to emphasize how you’ve impacted your company’s bottom line. Telling everybody that you’re the best mobile developer in the state will just earn you some odd looks, and maybe a few comments about how such statements are unquantifiable; explaining how your mobile-development skills led to an app that earned massive revenue and established your company as a force in its market, by contrast, is a good way to show that you walk the walk, not just talk the talk.
Show Metrics
It’s not braggadocio if you can back it up with numbers: whether you’re detailing your successes in an updated C.V., or explaining your greatest hits to a job interviewer, make sure you can qualify accomplishments. “My restructuring of our analytics workflow allowed us to process databases three times as fast within a quarter,” for example, is a good way of doing so. If the numbers are in your favor, a few hard statistics are (often) worth several thousand words when it comes to pressing your case.
Tout Your Collaboration
Nobody succeeds alone, you’ve heard it said. When detailing your accomplishments, emphasize how you’ve collaborated as part of a team. That will not only blunt any perception that you’re hogging too much credit, but also emphasize your managerial and teamwork skills.
Many tech pros would rather crawl under a convenient rock than engage in rigorous self-promotion. That’s totally natural: not everyone likes tooting their own horn, even if they’re more than qualified to do so. But remaining invisible to colleagues, bosses, and respective employers could end up harming your career. If you want to advance to new and better positions—or just receive due credit for your awesome projects—you’ll need to promote what you’ve done. How can you do that without coming off as arrogant or conceited? It’s all in what you choose to focus on.
Emphasize Your Impact
When communicating with others about your accomplishments, make sure to emphasize how you’ve impacted your company’s bottom line. Telling everybody that you’re the best mobile developer in the state will just earn you some odd looks, and maybe a few comments about how such statements are unquantifiable; explaining how your mobile-development skills led to an app that earned massive revenue and established your company as a force in its market, by contrast, is a good way to show that you walk the walk, not just talk the talk.
Show Metrics
It’s not braggadocio if you can back it up with numbers: whether you’re detailing your successes in an updated C.V., or explaining your greatest hits to a job interviewer, make sure you can qualify accomplishments. “My restructuring of our analytics workflow allowed us to process databases three times as fast within a quarter,” for example, is a good way of doing so. If the numbers are in your favor, a few hard statistics are (often) worth several thousand words when it comes to pressing your case.
Tout Your Collaboration
Nobody succeeds alone, you’ve heard it said. When detailing your accomplishments, emphasize how you’ve collaborated as part of a team. That will not only blunt any perception that you’re hogging too much credit, but also emphasize your managerial and teamwork skills.
Nick Kolakowski has written for The Washington Post, Slashdot, eWeek, McSweeney's, Thrillist, WebMD, Trader Monthly, and other venues. He's also the author of "A Brutal Bunch of Heartbroken Saps" and "Maxine Unleashes Doomsday," a pair of noir thrillers.
