Journal

For the average American student, at least 16 years of your life are spent in school, and the journey after college graduation starts—hopefully, at least—with getting a full-time job. That’s the game plan, right? But for some, the idea of immediately going to work is daunting.

“As a senior in college you are bombarded with the question, ‘What’s your plan after you graduate?'” says Heather Hoglund of Boston, an associate producer who took a year off to backpack through Europe. “If the answer is anything other than ‘get a job,’ you’re bound to get some pretty weird looks. There’s this idea that, now that you have a college degree, you’ve got to go do something with it as soon as possible.”

But believe it or not, taking time off before entering the workforce can have its perks. While how your downtime is perceived by employers hinges on a number of factors—some within your control, some not—the so-called “gap year” doesn’t have to be a negative point on your resume.

Intrigued? We spoke to millennials and career experts alike to determine if you really need to get a job right after you graduate. What they said might surprise you.

What Millennials Think

Millennials have an easy time of seeing both the pros and cons of taking time off. While economic factors like student loans have an impact on whether one sees taking a gap year as a luxury or a necessity, a survey conducted by UK career site Milkround found that 88% of graduates reported that their gap year had significantly added to their employability.

The gap year trend has only recently taken off in the U.S., according to FastWeb, an online scholarship matching and college search service—but the results are rewarding, to say the least.

Research from the American Gap Association, a nonprofit organization researching the benefits of gap years, shows the majority of gap-year participants found taking time off helped them acquire skills to be successful in their career, impacted their career decision, and ultimately, helped them find a job.

Kelsey Reinke of Seattle spent two years working odd jobs and traveling before landing her current role as a cargo agent at Delta Airlines. She found taking time off beneficial both personally and professionally, suggesting it made her a better applicant.

“I learned many valuable skills abroad,” says Reinke. “I proved my patience, self-sufficiency, and ability to work together with all different kinds of people. I value my global perspective and believe that it makes me an interesting candidate for many jobs.”

Hoglund, meanwhile, believes there is too much pressure on millennials to start working immediately and suggests trying to find a job before taking a trip.

“I actually interviewed for jobs prior to traveling,” says Hoglund. “I was honest and mentioned I already had plans but could start when I got back. Most employers were very receptive to the idea and were even a bit jealous! Knowing I had a job waiting for me after I was done traipsing through northern Europe helped me enjoy the trip more.”

What Career Experts Think

Here’s the big, obvious drawback of the gap year: If you decide to take time off, you’ll need to explain the gaping hole in your resume when you start applying for jobs.

You’re bound to set yourself back a bit by waiting to start your job search. Wendi Weiner, a resume expert and owner of resume service firm The Writing Guru in Miami, thinks millennials should begin sending out their resume not just after they graduate, but during their final semester.

“Due to increased market competition, millennials should recognize that there are a large number of graduates who are also applying to the same jobs. You don’t want to fall into the situation of not securing any interviews by waiting to apply.”

Nevertheless, a gap in your resume might not be a total deal breaker—given you’re able to sell yourself in an interview. Elizabeth Atcheson, a career coach at Blue Bridge Career Coaching in Seattle, says the decision is ultimately up to you, and you should focus on the benefits of taking time off. In the end, it’s probably better to do it now than it would be down the line, when it would be harder to explain away a lengthy career gap.

“If you can afford to take, say, the summer off before looking for a job, and if you’re itching to travel or do something else, then go ahead and do it,” says Atcheson. “If you explored something of keen interest to you during that time and can talk about what you learned, most hiring managers will not hold that few months’ gap against you.”

This article originally appeared on Monster and is reprinted with permission.

Aside from the mudslinging and name calling this election cycle, launching and running a successful presidential campaign has a lot in common with starting and running a business. Not only does it take considerable entrepreneurial chops—from raising and managing funds to building an organization from scratch—it demands many of the same leadership skills a president needs to draw on once in office. Here’s what the high stakes, breakneck pace, and unpredictable twists of the campaign trail can teach business leaders everywhere.

1. Plan Everything And Underestimate Nothing

Planning ahead for virtually every possibility can help campaigns avoid wasting money and getting blindsided by opponents. In a campaign, much of the planning goes toward legal resources and contingencies. Business leaders don’t have end goals as concrete as winning the presidency, which actually makes this even more imperative.

Start asking questions about your progress and objectives as early as possible, and revisit them continuously: What’s the one big goal your company needs to reach? And what are the shorter-term achievements you’ll need to win on the way before you do? A presidential campaign has a separate plan for each and every state, county, and city. Ideally, staffers and strategists know the rules, regulations, and voters in each and every one. That goes right on down to the volunteers at the front lines—who is doing what, when, and how come?

If you think coordinating your own staff is difficult, try this level of coordination across the nation with unpaid volunteers. There’s a very detailed plan, and everyone needs to be clear on the end goal. Your business is no different. Do you have a detailed plan, does your entire staff know and understand it, and are they fully equipped to execute their piece of it?

2. Find Advisers With Real Experience

It doesn’t matter which news channel you prefer to watch or listen to—you’ve seen past and present presidential advisers sparring over political ideas and strategic steps and missteps. These people have spent careers immersed in party politics. They have a network, a set of tactics, a track record of wins and losses, and a deep historical knowledge of what’s worked and what hasn’t—and they deploy all of that expertise to accomplish one thing: helping their candidate win.

Who is doing this for your business? Where is your all-star think tank or advisory board? Who are your coaches and what experience can they bring to the table? As a business leader, you need reliable experts on hand who are committed to what you’re trying to accomplish together. Let them do what they do best so you can focus on your piece of it.

3. Use Technology To Deliver Your Message

Politics aside, President Obama was the first presidential candidate to effectively use social media as a major part of his campaign strategy, which had an outsize impact on younger voters. Rather than writing off that demographic, he tapped into their potential. As a business, consider how you’re leveraging technology and connecting with younger users. No matter your product or service, no viable 21st-century company can afford to dismiss millennial and gen Z customers.

By the same token, none can do without a robust digital strategy, either. Marketplaces are too volatile and Internet-driven to simply draw up a business plan and execute it. Companies have to be responsive and listen, readjusting wherever necessary in order to connect with what people want and need, and the technological and data-based tools for doing that have never been more sophisticated or widely available.

4. Differentiate Yourself Early

Know your platform, and make sure it sets you apart. As a business, your constituents are like voters. You can’t please and appeal to everyone, so what segment are you going after? What do they want, and do they know who you are? Can they explain that to someone who doesn’t?

Think about any given candidate and you can quickly come up with at least two to three soundbites you’ve probably heard them say over and over again. Decide from the get-go on the value or idea that will resonate the most with your target market. Then repeat, repeat, repeat.

5. Know Who Will Hold Your Signs

At every rally or gathering a candidate puts together, there’s a backdrop of supporters holding signs and banners with the candidate’s name, and a catchphrase or two that says what they stand for. What does your company’s metaphorical sign say, and who will hold it up each and every day? Ideally, every employee will be a vocal advocate for your brand, customers, and vendors. If that isn’t happening already, it’s up to you as a leader to determine what your message is and who will stick up for it.

6. Learn Everything You Can—And Then Make The Tough Calls

Being a leader is never easy, and listening to advisers, employees, and customers takes work and patience. But campaigning politicians face a similar conundrum, trying to respond to the advice of strategists, the needs of voters, and their own guts. The key is to remember that the information available is always limited, even if it sometimes seems you’re up to your neck in it or, at other times, don’t have enough.

Few campaign decisions are made alone by a candidate. Each one is usually researched and discussed and researched again. Granted, you may not have the polling, statistics, and public commentary (so to speak) when making most decisions, but every business leader has the ability to ask stakeholders, do research, and crunch the latest numbers before making an informed choice.

The list can certainly go on from here, but for every entrepreneur, startup founder, and CEO from now until November, here’s a challenge: Imagine your company’s strategy as a presidential campaign. How would you differentiate yourself from the field of competitors, what would you look for in campaign advisers, and how would you position yourself to win?

Kristen McAlister is president/COO and co-owner of Cerius Executives. She has extensive experience in leading major acquisitions, sales, and operations initiatives with small and large privately held companies to publicly held international companies.

When ToyTalk’s founders, Oren Jacob and Martin Reddy, began the company in 2011, the most obvious application for their automated conversation technology—which orchestrates speech recognition, natural language processing, and selection of dialogue in real time—was toys. Both founders were familiar with children’s stories, having 26 years at Pixar between them, and they began making mobile games, like The Winston Show and SpeakaLegend, with characters that could converse with kids. Soon, they hatched partnerships that gave voice to characters like Barbie and Thomas the Tank Engine.

What ToyTalk had done differently was to loop creative writers directly into the process of authoring automated conversation—instead of just voices, the characters got personalities. Through an authoring program called PullString, these writers were able to create dialogue for the characters without having to have any programming knowledge.

Now, as chatbots—software programs that communicate with humans by using artificial intelligence—have proliferated, that’s something more and more companies want to do. To reflect a shift in strategy, ToyTalk has now changed its name to PullString; while it will still use its technology for toys, it will also market its authoring tool to other types of companies that want to chat with customers on platforms like Facebook or Slack. (Facebook recently unveiled new functionality for chatbots on Messenger, envisioning users making dinner reservations, booking flights, and making purchases via automated chat conversations.) “Like you would download Photoshop to play with a digital image, like you would download Excel to play in a spreadsheet,” Jacob says, “developers who want to create bots can download PullString and create an experience using that technology.”

Back in 2011, on the same week Jacob and Reddy closed their first round of venture capital, Apple launched its voice-controlled assistant Siri, who not only conveyed information, but told an occasional joke. “That has opened up talking to characters and talking to computers, and the use of natural language as a message beyond keyboard and mouse and touchscreen to interact,” Jacob says.

Amazon’s Alexa and Microsoft’s Cortana followed. As did chatbots that act as nurses, who both question patients about medical conditions and commiserate with them. The proliferation of chat interfaces like WeChat, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Slack have extended potential applications for chatbots even further. NBC-owned Breaking News made a chatbot that pings users with customized news alerts inside of Slack. Taco Bell made a Slack TacoBot that will take your order. Kik and Microsoft both recently released tools for authoring chatbots. So did native advertising startup Outbrain.

PullString will compete on the premise that its tool was built with character building in mind—that you’re freed up to focus on conversational style rather than coding. “When a company is texting to a customer back and forth, the word choice matters,” Jacob says. “The tone. The mood. The style of what is said matters. It matters because Coke isn’t Pepsi, and Pepsi isn’t Coke. It matters because people don’t want to be spoken to in preselected word choice.”

Some technology companies are hiring playwrights, poets, and other creative writers to author personalities for automated conversations. For this new type of writing, PullString is betting that they’ll also need a new type of notebook—and that they’ll want to borrow Barbie’s.

Correction: An earlier version of this post incorrectly stated the number of years ToyTalk’s founders worked at Pixar.

Related video: The Evolution of Barbie

This week, we learned how to diagnose workplace narcissism, which subtle cues you might be sending to hiring managers, and what the most familiar statistic in the equal pay debate leaves out.

These are the stories you loved in Leadership for the week of April 11.

1. Hiring Managers Reveal The 10 Seemingly Small Things They Judge Candidates On

It isn’t just your resume that hiring managers are scrutinizing. Here’s a look at some of the subtler things, like the kinds of questions you ask and how punctual you are, that you might be getting scored on.

2. 5 Habits To Get Over Self-Limiting Beliefs

We may not be fully conscious of our most deeply held negative ideas about ourselves. Yet according to resilience expert Andrew Shatté, some of those “iceberg beliefs” motivate us to try harder, even though they can leave us feeling dejected if we come up short. This week, Shatté shared some strategies for getting past them.

3. A Detailed Look At How Complex Equal Pay Day Really Is

The oft-repeated statistic that women earn 79¢ for every dollar a man does conceals a much more complicated reality. The gender pay gap yawns wider for minority and older women, for instance. This week we took a deep dive into the data to unearth some facets of the issue that the familiar conversation tends to obscure.

4. The Introvert’s Guide To Painless Personal Branding

It isn’t just introverts who find self-promotion distasteful; those with less outgoing personalities can really struggle with it. To help, one writer suggests creating a persona: “‘Professional Claire’ is a little more confident than ‘Real Claire’ (and she has fewer hang-ups). She embraces the necessity of networking online and showing her work.”

5. How To Spot (And Work With) The Office Narcissist

“Most people think a narcissist is the preening braggart, reality-TV type, but narcissism isn’t all about that,” says Harvard psychologist Craig Malkin. Instead, narcissism simply refers to how self-important we feel, and the usual showboating isn’t the only sign of the narcissist in your office. This week we learned some better ways to pinpoint them, and how to work together painlessly.

It’s more often that a prospective employer turns you down than the other way around. But what if you’re the one who decides you’re no longer interested in a job you’ve put yourself in the running for? Remember, nobody likes rejection, and that includes the hiring manager. So if you do plan to turn a company down, you need to do it well, because you want your name and reputation to be in pristine condition at all times. Here’s how.

Say “No” As Soon As You Can

If after your interviews the job doesn’t sound like something you’re interested in—or the people you’ve met are not a good match, or the company culture isn’t right for you—then reject the company before you are offered a position. Make sure, though, that you absolutely, positively do not want the job, and do not want to work for the company before you take this step.

If you’re unsure, then just continue the process until the company makes you an offer. Then, after careful consideration, you can call the person who made you the offer and give him or her strong reasons why you won’t be taking the job. Remember, the person offering you the position wants to hear the truth, and you shouldn’t leave him or her wondering what went wrong.

If you know in your heart of hearts that there’s no way you can see yourself waking up every day and going in to the job you’ve been interviewing for, you owe it to yourself and the company to stop the interview process. Otherwise, you’re wasting your time when you could be looking for a job you really do want, and you are wasting the company’s time, too. The company will not be happy if you go through several rounds of interviews and wind up rejecting the job for reasons you could’ve stated earlier.

As a hiring manager, if I go through the interview process with a candidate, and he or she comes in and meets with five people on the interview team, and then, when a job is offered, the response is something like, “No thank you, I really wanted to work for a company in the suburbs so I don’t have to commute,” you can be sure it will annoy everybody involved.

To be fair, maybe the candidate came to that conclusion midway through the hiring process. But if you interview for a job you decide just don’t want under any circumstances—whether it’s due to issues with the role itself, the company, or the people you meet with, an email like this one is all it takes to let the interviewer know you’re longer interested:

Dear [hiring manager’s name],

Thank you very much for your time yesterday. I enjoyed meeting with you and discussing the opportunity. After learning more about the job and its responsibilities, I have decided that the position is not something that is right for me. As I result, I would like to withdraw my candidacy in order for you to move forward with someone who would be a better fit. Thank you again and good luck with filling the position.

Sincerely,
[Your name]

The hiring manager will appreciate your honesty, but most of all he or she will appreciate the chance to move forward in a more positive direction and find a candidate who does want the job.

What (Not) To Do When The Interview Experience Turns Sour

If you feel that the interview process hasn’t been fair to you for whatever reason, it’s best to consider it a good learning experience and just move on. Don’t dwell on it. Nothing good will come from getting mad at the interviewer and saying something you will regret.

Edward was being considered for an account job. He had a good interview with the first person he met with on my staff and then came in for an interview with a second, higher-level person. The interview had been going well until Edward was asked about his former boss. He indicated that there was a clash of egos, and after a few minutes of discussing this issue, the interviewer realized it was time to move on.

But Edward was stuck on this and couldn’t move forward. As the interview progressed, he became more and more unhinged. And then it happened: He was asked a question he really didn’t like about the strength of his work ethic. At that point, he stood up, collected his papers, announced that the interview was over, and walked out.

It didn’t end there, though. The next day, Edward sent a letter to me and the other partners at our agency. In his two-page letter of complaint against the interviewer, he stated that the interviewer was “dismissive” and then added, “She needs better management training.” And these were some of the nicer things that he said about her.

It goes without saying that you should absolutely never take this approach—nothing good will come of it. But even in less over-the-top situations, you may walk away from a job process that’s turned you off and feel tempted to explain why. It probably isn’t worth it.

You may feel you’ve been misunderstood, but the truth is that you aren’t going to get the management team to change their minds about you. You’re certainly not going to get invited back for another interview. And worse still, you aren’t going to garner a good reputation in your industry. So if you’re frustrated and do feel the need to speak your mind, write the email, read it over, feel better about yourself—and then delete it.

But do not hit send. Even though you believe you’re in the right, the people receiving it will likely see it as confirmation that you were a poor candidate. Imagine your dream job comes up five years down the road, you send in your résumé, and it winds up in the hands of the person you called out in a letter to his or her bosses. Trust me, that person will remember you.

This article is adapted from The Dirty Little Secrets of Getting Your Dream Job. Copyright © 2016 by Don Raskin. It is reprinted with permission.

You don’t need anyone to explain to you the fundamentals of job interviewing—maximize your network, scrub social media of even marginally NSFW words or images (after all, it’s the W you’re after), and don’t answer “excessive modesty” when interviewers ask, “What’s your biggest weakness?”

You’ve probably also worked up a beautifully embroidered—yet excessively modest—yarn for the inevitable, “Tell me about your roughest professional challenge and how you overcame it.”

If you really want to get competitive, you need to go a level or two deeper. Just as your résumé doesn’t say everything important about you, job postings and descriptions don’t say everything important about a job. Crammed with dry lists of “responsibilities,” job listings are often written in a hurry, or by HR people without firsthand knowledge of what the job actually means to the team looking to fill it. If you can figure out the truly important stuff between the lines, you’ll be better able to prove your value to the organization while learning vital lessons about the its culture.

And the time to suss that out is vanishingly short. It comes after the interviewer is done with their questions for you and asks if there’s anything you’d like to know before shaking hands and parting ways. Don’t let this opportunity go to waste. You’ll want to have a few key questions on standby.

What Your Questions Should Reveal

Take time before an interview to write down how you can contribute to your future team beyond just checking off all the qualifications listed in the job posting. Even if you’re off the mark, you’ll get the upper hand by framing the discussion about your potential impact on those larger objectives and distinguishing yourself as someone who thinks ahead.

Next, be aware that hiring managers and good HR pros judge you not only on the quality of your answers but also on the quality of your questions. They’ve got your résumé, and they’ll be checking references. What they don’t know is the story behind your story and what’s going on inside your head.

So when the interview, apparently winding down, comes to what sounds like a tacked-on formality—”Now, do you have any questions for me?”—the moment has arrived to separate yourself from the swarm that usually says, “Umm . . . no, I think that about covers it.” The best way to let the hiring manager into your head—while unearthing crucial truths about the organizational culture you’re seeking to join—is to ask questions that can lead to deeper conversation. Good questions are like little stones you throw against a window to find out who’s inside. Here are three.

1. Is The Org Chart Here A Flexible Suggestion Or An Iron Commandment?

It doesn’t matter what role you’re applying for. Modern organizations should be like sports teams: No matter what position you play, your primary concern is the welfare of the entire team, and at any moment you could be asked to do something other than your assigned job. The offense must always help the defense, and vice versa.

Try this: “I want to learn as much about this company and this market as I can, going beyond the job we’re talking about. Will I sometimes be asked to jump into other people’s roles or other departments? How often does the organization have an ‘all-hands-on-deck’ moment when people from every department get together and do whatever’s needed to meet a big challenge? What’s your advice on how I can make a difference here?”

2. What’s The Culture Of Achievement Like?

At the center of job satisfaction is working in a culture you love, and drawing strength from that culture every day. As the borders between life and work melt away (for better or worse), it’s essential to work in a culture that makes you happy and leaves you feeling like you’re actually advancing.

Try this: “Tell me something about the culture here, and what the organization is doing to build and strengthen that culture.” It’s a short question, but the resulting answer will hopefully be long on illumination.

3. Can I Be An “Intrapreneur” Here?

Sure, maybe it’s a silly neologism, but simply put, “intrapreneurs” are employees who exhibit the energy and innovation from inside the organization. Being an intrapreneur is the best job of all, since it combines security with the elastic freedom to excel. Organizations that support intrapreneurship help employees get better at their jobs, reach higher to do things they’ve always wanted to do, and boost their professional passion and satisfaction.

Try this: “What kind of program does the company have to encourage and support entrepreneurial behavior inside the organization? What tools and training does the company offer to empower me to contribute beyond the one role we’re talking about today?”

Finally, take a pad and pen into every interview and take notes. This is a personal obsession of mine. When I interview prospective team members who don’t take notes, I write that person off (no pun intended . . . well, maybe a little). Taking notes shows you’re listening, that you care. What will your notes reveal? If you ask the right questions, they’ll capture the all-important story behind the story in every job-seeking encounter.

Kelly Max is cofounder, president, and CEO of Haufe USA, a next-generation San Francisco-based talent management/HR company that custom-tailors combinations of consulting, software, and service-related offerings to enable clients to meet their strategic business goals.

If you feel like you’re doing your job on autopilot, you’re not alone. In 2015, only 32% of U.S. employees said they were actively engaged in their jobs, according to a Gallup poll. For many people, that disengagement is tied closely to a sense that their career development is stagnating.

Please note, however, that stagnation isn’t the same as disliking your job. When you truly hate your gig, you’ll likely feel compelled to do something about it, says Anna S.E. Lundberg, a London-based career coach. “On the other hand, it’s those of us who are just plodding along, not hating our careers but also lacking any real engagement with our work who are likely to feel stuck and remain in a role or even a career that has no real future,” she adds. Stagnation, therefore, is far worse for one’s career, since it doesn’t lead to any action.

Whitney Johnson, career coach at Harvard’s Executive Education program and author of Disrupt Yourself: Putting the Power of Disruptive Innovation to Work, uses an S-curve to illustrate how the various stages of a career might look: “At the base of the curve there is slow growth,” she says. “It takes time to master new information or skills. At this stage, what may feel like stagnation could in reality be growth, requiring patience and effort until things get more lively.”

If you can slog through that slow period, she says, you will rapidly grow and move up until you reach the top of the slope. And that’s when actual stagnation becomes a real risk to your career. But how do you know if you’re in the good part of the S or the bad—or, whether what you’re experiencing is a natural slowdown or an actual career rut? If you answer “no” to three or more of these five questions, you’re stuck in the mud.

1. Are You Motivated At Work?

Everyone gets bored with work sometimes, but boredom shouldn’t be your everyday. If it is, your motivation will start to erode. Cue the career rut. Whether you know it or not, you need motivation to work hard. Without drive, your career growth is DOA.

If your performance has plateaued, you have no desire to learn anything new, and you don’t feel compelled to go beyond what’s strictly necessary to do your job, it’s time to do a little soul-searching to figure out why, says Marilyn Santiesteban, assistant director of career services at The Bush School at Texas A&M.

Maybe you’ve been doing the same tasks for too long; maybe you need to be challenged more. It’s important to figure out why you’re bored before you can tell truthfully whether you’re in a temporary lull or a not-so-temporary rut.

2. Has It Been 4-Plus Years Since Your Last Promotion?

If you’ve been in your position for that long with no promotion, then it’s probably not going to come, Johnson says. Management likes you right where you are.

Of course, it’s frustrating to be repeatedly passed over for steps up you feel you’ve earned, so you need to figure out why it’s happening. Perhaps your boss doesn’t know you’re interested in moving ahead, or maybe you need to learn a new skill or two to climb to the next step on the ladder. This calls for a frank conversation with the person above you to find out exactly what it would take to get ahead.

Maybe you’ve reached a ceiling in your organization, or if there’s no space for you to move up, Johnson says. And if so, hearing it may just be the call to action you need to move on.

3. Are You Meeting New People At Work?

If your company isn’t bringing in any new people and workplace events are always the “same old, same old,” then it might not just be you that’s stagnating.

Organizations can also plateau, but when they do, the careers of the company’s employees usually do also. So, while you can learn quickly in the right role with such a company, you’ll eventually stall out as well, Johnson adds.

Check your organization as a whole for signs of stagnation, Santiesteban says. Look for flat sales, retooling of existing products or services rather than creating new ones, executive team members and senior management that have been around forever, or static or slightly shrinking market share.

4. Are Your Performance Reviews Exceptional?

If you’re consistently “meeting expectations,” you’re not “growing in your career.”

“Maybe things are not terrible, they’re just okay; fine,” Lundberg says. “Is that how you want to live your life? Sort of average, things plodding along but with no passion, no excitement, no real feeling of fulfillment?”

When everything you do at work is only average, it may be time to shake things up. Easier said than done: But you’re going to have to go a little above and beyond if you want to break free from the shackles of stagnation. Take on a new project, or at least give your next project your all.

5. Are You Sure You Want To Stick Around?

If you spend your days fantasizing about doing something else, whether it’s a childhood dream or simply changing companies or fields, it’s likely a sign that your career isn’t meeting fundamental needs for you, Lundberg says.

“If you dig into the underlying values behind these fantasies and plans, you may find what’s missing from your current career,” she says. “Is it a sense of freedom and independence, the ability to make your own decisions, an opportunity to learn something new, or is it a question of earning more or working less?”

If you can answer those questions, you might be able to re-inject some of those missing elements into your current career, she adds. On the other hand, if you have a passion you’ve been dreaming of following for years, then now may be the time to make it a reality.

It’s the job of every manager to size up their team members and evaluate their potential. That means understanding not just their current talents, but also their likelihood of developing them for higher-impact roles. It’s no small challenge, and it’s one that even good managers sometimes fall short of. So it’s helpful if you can show off your high potential in a way that’s conspicuous without being obnoxious.

Whether they’ve laid it out in an official framework or otherwise, many companies use roughly the same criteria to determine which of their employees have the highest potential to move up their ranks. The three most common aren’t all that surprising: likability, ability, and work ethic. Here’s how to make sure you’re authentically showing off all three.

1. You’re Easy And Pleasant To Deal With

Can you build and maintain positive relations with others, and generally show good organizational citizenship? Great! That will help you when it comes to likability, which is often a function of high emotional intelligence, not to mention the ability to hold in check the darker sides of your personality (arrogance, greed, selfishness, and passive aggressiveness).

And since your potential is mostly evaluated by your direct manager, who plays the single most important role in deciding your success in the company, it goes without saying that it’s important the two of you get along. Unsurprisingly, many individuals are promoted mostly because of their ability to manage upward.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but your political skills can be as important in the workplace as genuine likability and emotional intelligence. So even if it takes a conscious effort, make yourself easy to work with and you’ll be more likely to get recognized.

2. You’re Obviously Capable

Ability concerns both the hard and soft skills connected with your actual job performance. Hard skills are a function of experience and expertise—how well you can ignore the irrelevant stuff and get down to solving a tactical problem, for instance. By comparison, that piece of someone’s ability is easy to judge based on their past performance.

Soft skills, on the other hand, concern IQ, good judgment, and curiosity, which enable you to go beyond what you already know and acquire more job-relevant skills. Typically, employers assess your ability by comparing your maximum performance—the best you can do, based on what you’ve already done—with your peers, notably employees with similar experience or who work at the same level. If you can appear more capable than your colleagues on both hard and soft skills, you’ll stand a better chance at your employer seeing your potential.

3. You’re Willing To Work Hard (For The Right Reasons)

How driven, proactive, and persistent are you most of the time? Work ethic isn’t a question of perfectionism, as many people imagine. Instead, it’s a function of your personality, especially your ambition. However, everybody is more motivated when their jobs seem meaningful and interesting, and this comes by aligning employees’ roles with their own interests and values.

In that sense, potential roughly comes down to personality in the right place. If you love your job and you’re usually engaged at work, you’re probably in the right career and organization. This increases your chances of being picked out as a high-potential employee.

That said, these three criteria for potential won’t always translate into exceptional performance at higher levels of organizations. Even when employees are rewarding to work with, highly capable, and work hard because they’re intrinsically motivated to do so, it isn’t always enough. Transitioning from an individual contributor to a manager, then from manager to leader, require a different set of skills and characteristics altogether.

So in addition to being liked by your boss, cultivate a reputation for being fair, consistent, and trustworthy. The higher up you move, your relevant skills and expertise will be less important than your ability to build and maintain a high-performing team, with the goal of achieving through others. Finally, your work ethic will progressively depend less on your own engagement with the technical aspects of your job and more on how well you can engage your team.

In other words, once your potential is recognized and you begin managing others, your potential to move even higher depends on manifesting those same three qualities in your team members.