Better yet, what are you doing to raise your value in the market place? It doesn’t matter if you are an employee, a self employed contractor or a business person, these personal investment strategies will raise your market value.
1. Understand that the playing field is not level and that the judges are not fair. Fairness is not a particularly desirable playing field anyway. Those who decide to excel are held back by the fairness shown to those who never desire to do more than the minimum, but expect equal rewards. People that don’t worry about fair – worth more.
2. Share the credit for good things you did, but with help. Spread the credit around and take those along with you that contribute to the win. Don’t hog the credit and don’t believe you did it single handedly. Nobody gets anywhere all by themselves. You had help. Those who forget that are one day forgotten also. People that share the credit – worth more.
3. Become a good listener and learn to understand what the other person wants. It may or may not be something we can provide but mostly we never know because we don’t listen. We spend most of our listening time formulating our responses, readying our credentials or thinking about someone else we just saw walk into the room. People that listen – worth more.
4. Become solution oriented. Every career, country or age has its share of problems. Anyone can find them and be critical of things. Leaders are solution oriented and bring positive, thoughtful solutions when they point out problems. Problem solvers – worth a lot
5. Last but not least, take responsibility for your work, and most especially, mistakes. People are usually willing to forgive you for mistakes of the head. Those are mistakes you make where you just messed up and did something wrong. Others are not so willing to forgive mistakes of the heart. The ones where you try to cover up your mistake or blame someone else. People that don’t take responsibility – worth less.
Employers will tell you that even at what we deem to be a high unemployment rate of 8.5%, high worth individuals like the ones described in these five points are difficult to find.
When they are found, they get hired.
