Give Your Career a Boost

What it is

I wrote this for people in their first few years at work. It’s for the stage when nobody has told you how to run a check-in meeting, say no to extra work, or follow up without being annoying, and you’re expected to figure it out anyway. Each of the 25 tips is a page or less, with a few links to go deeper and a quote to remember it by.

Some of the tips are habits, like getting a mentor, owning your inbox, and doing the most unpleasant task first. Others are skills that take longer to build, like influencing people (with a quick primer on Cialdini’s six principles), telling a good story, negotiating, and running a post-mortem. The last tip is to ask for feedback, which is where HelpMeShine came in. The eBook was the free download that introduced people to the product.

Why I wrote it

It grew out of my belief in kaizen: improve a little every day, and over a career it adds up. Some of the tools I recommended are from 2013 (RIP, iTunes U), but the habits hold up.