Career Mistake #3: Assuming Hard Work Alone Will Get You Promoted

Working hard is only part of ensuring you are in the promotion pool at work.  Showing initiative is important too, but unless the key decision makers know who you are, what your work quality and quantity is like, your chances of moving ahead is severely limited.  Key executives tell me that their careers really took off when they made the conscious effort to Take Charge of Their Careers.  I actually considered that as a title for one of the drafts of Fast Forward Your Career.  Taking charge doesn't mean manipulating, grandstanding, or becoming the king or queen of office politics.   It does mean, however, treating you career as something that needs to be planned and managed...by you!  As the other career mistakes have suggested, leaving your career to anyone but yourself is not a good idea.