Don’t rely on memory. Write down your successes.
By Jim Wiederhold
When I meet with people who are starting their career transition journey, I often ask if they have a record of their accomplishments from their previous positions. Most often, people assure me that the information is stored “in their head.”
Relying on memory to account for your successes is not going to work. Those memories get more general as time goes on, and you lose the detail and specifics that make your accomplishments stand out when looking for the next step in your career. To keep track of your successes in concrete detail rather than approximations, it is essential to keep what I call a “business diary.”
In its simplest form, a business diary is a daily or weekly log of your key successes. It can be computer- or cloud-based, or in a physical book, but it should outline in as much detail as possible your accomplishments.
This is helpful on three levels:
During an internal review, you have all the facts.
If you decide to leave your organization, your resume will be easy to write. If you are pushed out of your organization, you don’t need to scramble to gather the info you’ll need to prepare for your next career move.
On a hard day, when you feel you have made no impact in your organization or in your field, you can read through a few pages to remind you of the meaningful contributions you’ve made.