In an increasingly challenging job market, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Whether you’re navigating your current role (from the C-suite on down) or pursuing your next opportunity, self-marketing in your career is no longer optional—it’s essential.
Here are three high-impact ways to do it.
On the Job: Create a Five-Second Pitch
Your five-second pitch is a short, natural way to spotlight your value in unexpected moments—with your boss, their boss, senior leaders, key stakeholders, or in meetings. The goal is to spark interest and create career-boosting opportunities.
Example:
Julie, an SVP client two levels below the CEO at a middle-market company, stepped into an elevator and found herself face-to-face with the CEO, with whom she had limited interaction. He asked, “Hi Julie—how are you doing?”
She could have replied, “Fine—how are you?”
Instead, she used the five-second pitch we came up with and said: “Really good—now that I’ve wrapped up our workflow management project.”
The CEO replied, “Sounds interesting—tell me more.” The conversation ended with the CEO saying: “We may want to roll this out company-wide. Let’s set up a meeting and include your boss.”
Result: One five-second pitch created unexpected visibility—and a meaningful career boost.
In a Job Search: Don’t Brag. DO Inform.
In every job-search marketing channel—your resume, LinkedIn profile, emails, networking conversations, interviews—you need to communicate not just your responsibilities but what you accomplished, sharing specific results in the process.
Many professionals (especially senior leaders) resist this because it feels like bragging. it’s not: you’re giving your audience information they need to make the best decision. And, helping them to evaluate you accurately of course helps you to stand out from the competition. To illustrate, here are three contrasting ways to represent a resume bullet:
Responsibility: “Led the Corporate Development team in identifying M&A opportunities.”
Bragging: “Excel at leading Corporate Development teams in identifying profitable M&A opportunities.”
Informing (and far more powerful): “Led the Corporate Development team in identifying a dozen M&A opportunities; 80% closed, all met or exceeded KPIs.” Same experience. Very different impact.
Think broadly about your network, and get the word out.
From research, weak ties can often be more helpful than the people you know well in landing job search/career opportunities. So, think expansively about your network; aim to let 200 people know about your job search. This number isn’t hard to achieve if you include professional colleagues you haven’t spoken to in years or even decades, family and friends, former classmates, association members, and so on. Your LinkedIn network can be a source of ideas for whom to contact.
For example, one of my clients reached out to a former classmate she hadn’t spoken with in 18 years; the outreach led to an interview at the company where her former classmate worked. Another client decided to blind-copy his neighbor, whom he didn’t know well, on an email to his family, friends, and “weak ties” about his search. It turned out that his neighbor’s husband’s brother’s wife worked for the CFO of a global Fortune 500 firm, one of his target companies. He received an introduction to the CFO and got an interview.
Contact them by email, so they can easily forward your information. In the email, share: 1) your job target, 2) your value proposition for your job target (your pitch), and 3) where you are looking to add value; list specific organizations that they might have heard of, as seeing these names will help them remember who they know.
Bottom Line
If you don’t proactively communicate your value, you’ll miss opportunities or even risk a layoff, as others will fill in the gaps—often incorrectly. So, bring a marketer’s mindset to your career.
Staying Quiet is a Career Risk: 3 Fixes
December 29, 2025 by Robert Hellmann • Resume, LinkedIn, self-promo
In an increasingly challenging job market, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Whether you’re navigating your current role (from the C-suite on down) or pursuing your next opportunity, self-marketing in your career is no longer optional—it’s essential.
Here are three high-impact ways to do it.
On the Job: Create a Five-Second Pitch
Your five-second pitch is a short, natural way to spotlight your value in unexpected moments—with your boss, their boss, senior leaders, key stakeholders, or in meetings. The goal is to spark interest and create career-boosting opportunities.
Example:
Julie, an SVP client two levels below the CEO at a middle-market company, stepped into an elevator and found herself face-to-face with the CEO, with whom she had limited interaction. He asked, “Hi Julie—how are you doing?”
She could have replied, “Fine—how are you?”
Instead, she used the five-second pitch we came up with and said: “Really good—now that I’ve wrapped up our workflow management project.”
The CEO replied, “Sounds interesting—tell me more.” The conversation ended with the CEO saying: “We may want to roll this out company-wide. Let’s set up a meeting and include your boss.”
Result: One five-second pitch created unexpected visibility—and a meaningful career boost.
In a Job Search: Don’t Brag. DO Inform.
In every job-search marketing channel—your resume, LinkedIn profile, emails, networking conversations, interviews—you need to communicate not just your responsibilities but what you accomplished, sharing specific results in the process.
Many professionals (especially senior leaders) resist this because it feels like bragging. it’s not: you’re giving your audience information they need to make the best decision. And, helping them to evaluate you accurately of course helps you to stand out from the competition. To illustrate, here are three contrasting ways to represent a resume bullet:
Think broadly about your network, and get the word out.
From research, weak ties can often be more helpful than the people you know well in landing job search/career opportunities. So, think expansively about your network; aim to let 200 people know about your job search. This number isn’t hard to achieve if you include professional colleagues you haven’t spoken to in years or even decades, family and friends, former classmates, association members, and so on. Your LinkedIn network can be a source of ideas for whom to contact.
For example, one of my clients reached out to a former classmate she hadn’t spoken with in 18 years; the outreach led to an interview at the company where her former classmate worked. Another client decided to blind-copy his neighbor, whom he didn’t know well, on an email to his family, friends, and “weak ties” about his search. It turned out that his neighbor’s husband’s brother’s wife worked for the CFO of a global Fortune 500 firm, one of his target companies. He received an introduction to the CFO and got an interview.
Contact them by email, so they can easily forward your information. In the email, share: 1) your job target, 2) your value proposition for your job target (your pitch), and 3) where you are looking to add value; list specific organizations that they might have heard of, as seeing these names will help them remember who they know.
Bottom Line
If you don’t proactively communicate your value, you’ll miss opportunities or even risk a layoff, as others will fill in the gaps—often incorrectly. So, bring a marketer’s mindset to your career.