Career Maintenance

Over the weekend, I vacuumed two flights of stairs, cleaned the bathrooms and washed the kitchen floor. I also sat down with my copy of Home Maintenance for Dummies and tried to figure out why my toilet sweats more than a marathon runner. Suggestions would still be appreciated.

As I completed my checklist, I wondered if anyone has ever applied the idea of home maintenance to their career. There are certain tasks that need to be completed in order to maintain the current value of your home. If you neglect these tasks, your home will decline in value and you will not see a return on investment.

Examples of career maintenance include the following:

Keeping your resume up-to-date by adding your most recent experience
Staying active on LinkedIn and making connections with people you work with
Taking inventory of the tasks you complete on a regular basis
Asking yourself if you really LIKE what you do. Seriously, do you?
Soliciting constructive feedback from your boss and co-workers
Continuing to gain new skills and knowledge (i.e. learn HTML, take a tutorial of a Microsoft Office product)

Career maintenance is about staying competitive in the current labor market by improving and demonstrating your abilities. After all the work is done, you can stand at the curb and congratulate yourself on a job well done. In addition to daily frustration and boredom, someone who does not take the steps to maintain their career will have as much difficulty obtaining a promotion or future career prospects as they will selling a house that has been neglected, season after season.

After you complete your household chores this weekend, I recommend starting on your career checklist:

Read Nick Turbach’s post, Celebrating Your Career Independence, on RecruitingBlogs.com and the solid comments as well. The questions posed in the post should be added to your career maintenance schedule.
Listen to Dan Schwabel's webcast, Personal Branding for Career Success, over on Brazen Careerist. Dan reminds employees and entrepreneurs to dedicate time to monitoring and promoting your personal brand.