Need a promotion? PROMOTE Yourself!

I've spoken before about that success of an HR person, or a Recruitment professional in the corporate world is akin to an umpire in a sporting event. If you don't notice them, then they are doing something right.

However, as some of my English friends say.. "Bollocks to that"

In the Recruitment world, Agency or Internal, it is a challenge to get that promotion, unless of course you are the last person standing in an agency! I know many people who now run 200+ people contract desks and make a bucket load of money. Are they the best Recruiter there? Questionable, but are they the most resilient or self promoter? Most likely. In an inhouse environment, very hard to get a promotion (unless you see full on HR as a step up), as traditionally those teams are traditionally small.

I was always under the impression, well, I was told by my parents, if you work hard, do a great job, you'll get noticed and you'll get what you deserve. Sorry, Mum, Dad, that isn't exactly true I've learned.

A few years ago I worked with a guy who was THE best self promoter, since Don King, I think he was the Australian version. He was a Sales guy in one of our interstate offices. It was a brand new region for our business, and if you listened to this guy, he was the Messiah. (actually, he did do a Monty python, he was just a very naughty boy!) Man, he was good, just ask him. He was obviously good, lots of people believed him.

Here's the kicker, when you looked at the results, OK, his results at the end of 6 months, he had produced, delivered and had a well qualified pipeline of $0. nothing, nada, zip. How could that be?

Well, I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed, but I picked up on this. My mind found itself another cliche to cling to "Perception is Reality". How many times have I heard this over the years? OMG I thought... It's true, it's really true. This guy told everyone how good he was, he sold everyone on his value proposition with such verve and conviction that they all believed it, without need for evidence.

Well, thinking about my function, which I do a lot, we hadn't received any type or level of attention, and you know what? We'd been delivering for the company for years.

That was a thunderbolt to me. I started bragging to everyone about our successes, talking to others about our short falls to gain buy-in in helping us to improve.

I told everyone, broadcast emails when we hit milestones, when an idea worked, we found a hard to fill person, when we used a new sourcing technique, I involved everyone in the company in Recruiting and showed how much value (and money) we added to the company. Even to the point of monetising our affects on the business (ie what you'd pay an agency for what we have delivered etc)

People started to pay attention, decision makers started consulting me on the way the business should be heading. The value add was seen and noticed, not without its detractors I must add, but the change was significant.

Recruitment eventually gained independance from the clutches of HR and we got our own seat at the Executive table. How? I did the same thing I always did, was just loud about it!