Now is the time to be aggressive at work, when being noticed and becoming indispensable to your company are more important than ever. 

John M. McKee, is the author of Career Wisdom: 101 Proven Strategies to Ensure Workplace Success

Pretty much any time is the appropriate time for self-promotion.  Even in this environment, there are people who are thriving and succeeding.  Those people are very good at self-promotion. 

Some tips from the book:

1.     Develop an elevator speech:

Take advantage of those brief encounters with people who can influence your career in the future, like if you happen to meet the CEO going to work and share an elevator ride.  To prepare, take 2-3 sentences that will present you in a very effective way and you feel comfortable with, memorize them, and use them at every opportunity.

2.     Pace Your Boss:

It is entirely to your benefit to spend as much time with your boss as possible.  If your boss comes in early or stays late, or comes in on the weekend, match those traits as much as possible to show you share the same work ethics.  Being with your boss and spending some one-on-one time when others are not around vying for attention is a great opportunity to establish or cement a relationship.

3.     Over-communicate:

We rely too much today on text messaging, voice mails and emails to get our messages across.  We need to make sure that people are aware of our contributions.  If decisions are being made that will impact who will be laid off or promoted, you want to be in the right area. 

Go out of your way to tell your boss what you are doing, by asking for formal meetings on a regular basis, chance encounters using the elevator speech, or perhaps sending a weekly email update of a status report for them. 

It is preferential to have the meeting in person, because the power of communication in face-to-face meetings or one-on-one far outweighs anything that text messaging or the volume of emails or the endless voicemails they get.  You want to see them, look them in the eye and convey your successes.

4.     Shine Brighter by Sharing Credit:

Most people hate “glory-hogs”.  It doesn’t matter whether it is your boss, or people that work with you or people working for you.  If you are seen as a “credit-hog” that takes all the glory, it will come back and bite you.  In an environment where people are shrinking the number of people working for them, they are often looking for a team player, someone who can work well with others and do more than one task.  Share the credit, be part of team, keep a job.

5.     Look the Part:

Dress for the position you want in the future.  You want to be perceived as capable as moving ahead.  It is also how you communicate, and how you carry yourself, standing tall, looking people in the eye, talking clearly, all make you look more like a winner, and when promotion opportunities come around, they will look to you first.

6.     Arrive Rested and Prepared:

It’s not always possible.  With all the news we see and hear, people are getting more anxious, and when we are more anxious, it impacts our sleep.  When our sleep goes downhill, we don’t perform very well, we become more emotional and foggy-headed.  We arrive on the job and are not capable of making decisions we would like to make with the speed that we would like to. 

You must get a good night’s sleep, come in prepared for the job and be clear-headed to make decisions.

7.     Network, Network:

Use social networking online.  Services like LinkedIn, Plaxo, and Facebook are being used more and more by recruiters, cruising, and looking for job replacements.  Make sure you look as good as you can on them.  Use them to connect with other people in like-minded jobs across the country to share ideas and learn tips. 

On a lower tech level, go to industry events as often as you can, get your card out there, use your resume, and your elevator speech.

See Career Wisdom: 101 Proven Strategies to Ensure Workplace Success