7 Things You Should Do To Build Your Career During The

Summer Slump

According to FastCompany.com

Sherry Romello

The Summer Slump

• When June hits and the weather becomes nice, it gets very easy to fall into a comfort zone and do all the fun summer activities

• Don’t put off small important career building tasks

SUMMER TO-DO #1: REVAMP YOUR ONLINE

BIOS• Update what you use to showcase yourself

• 3 versions of your bio that should all be consistent

• Micro bio (Twitter) which is generally 50 words

• Medium length bio, generally 100 words can be your website or blog

• Deeper dive bio, generally 500 words is more so your LinkedIn

SUMMER TO-DO #2: LIVEN UP YOUR LINKEDIN PAGE

• LinkedIn is a the primary way employers go about acquiring their candidates

• 94% of recruiters are active on LinkedIn (2014, Indeed)

• Set aside time every week to keep up your LinkedIn network

• Update your profile picture

SUMMER TO-DO #3: REQUEST A MID-YEAR

EVALUATION• Many companies may only do a once a year

evaluation (beginning or end of the year)

• Check in with your boss to see how you’ve progressed since winter

• You can review your strengths and weaknesses and jump ahead of the curve and try to fix them before your year end review

SUMMER TO-DO #4: TAKE YOUR NETWORKING

OUTDOORS

• Use the great weather to your networking advantage and network outdoors

• Even if golf isn’t your thing, there are many other opportunities to network with people outdoors

• Examples: baseball games, concerts, yoga classes

SUMMER TO-DO #5: FILL IN FOR VACATIONING CO-

WORKERS

• Do you have the drive to possibly learn a new role?

• If you have colleagues looking to take an extended vacation over the summer, offer to help out or fill in

• Even if no one is vacationing, make it known you want to take on more

SUMMER TO-DO #6: SCHEDULE INFORMATIONAL

INTERVIEWS• If you’re looking to make an industry change,

schedule as many informational interviews as possible

• Pick the brains of people in your network that work outside of your industry

• When conversating with these people, your end goal should be to find out what they do in their industry on a day to day basis

SUMMER TO-DO #7: START A CAREER

JOURNAL• Like a normal journal, begin to jot down thoughts

you have about your career

• Some things worth noting are things that make you tick, how you feel about work in present time, what at work puts you in a great mood

• A journal can help you discover things about yourself you otherwise wouldn’t have discovered