How to be a star worker...

In my first post I gave a few tips I thought might prove useful to those looking for a job but how do you excel once you have your foot in the door? Remember, no matter what your role, intern or CEO, the way to excel is to make life easier for the people you are working with, whether it is your boss, your peers, those that report to you or your clients. The list of tips is endless and will depend on your role and sphere of activity, but here are a few things to consider:

Me me me…

Ultimately, though many factors play into finding "success", you yourself need to have the makings of an excellent employee/provider of services if you want to excel. As such, first things first, make sure you are the best you can be:

1. Excellence: My mother has run her own successful beauty salon for several decades. For many years, in addition to other constraints on her time, she did this whilst raising four children. Yet, as she approaches retirement with a successful career mostly behind her, my mother goes to school (with 17 and 18 year olds!) and studies for another set of exams every year. She has taken chemistry, biology, mathematics, and computing classes, amongst others and thrives on the challenge each year… it is never too late to learn, develop new skills and find new ways to better yourself. The lesson to learn is that you need to do your work accurately, be highly organised, show attention to detail and go the extra mile whenever you can, including learning new things if that is what it takes to progress. In school, consistent bad grades can still result in a pass. If you want to avoid stagnation and progress in the work-place, you need to be an A-grade candidate.
2. Attitude: Never underestimate the value of a smile and showing your desire to improve and help. Every job you are are asked to do, no matter how small or unimportant it may seem, has value at least to the person asking you to do it. If you can find and appreciate that value, you can use it to your advantage (see the Keith Rabois example of an intern who managed to buy some smoothies), you will learn more, gain the trust of key decision makers and be given more responsibility. Your learning curve will be exponentially steeper than your peers and you will likely progress to more challenging, interesting and business-critical tasks.
3. [Team/Net] Work: However talented you are as an individual, your success also depends on others. Make yourself an asset to those around you and build a good internal and external network of reliable contacts on whom you can call when necessary. A periodic email just to check in, grabbing lunch with different colleagues and business contacts or a quick hello at someone's desk are all important, but so too are offers of help to others when you are less busy, or providing helpful know-how to friends or colleagues simply because you think they could benefit from it.

It's not all me me me…

So you have your own work ethic under control, but what about external factors? Do you really understand what you, your boss, your company and your clients are trying to achieve? I am a big fan of asking questions, but these need to be well formed questions and you should try, to the extent possible, to group your questions logically. Good explanations are included in this Harvard Business Review summary and also this Lifehack article.

In addition, also learn to ask for feedback and learn to give feedback! This is the best way to improve and makes it much easier to progress when you have a clear metric to bring to your direct reports, boss or client and to demonstrate that you did exactly what was expected of you (or to explain why you did not).

Effective Use of Resources

The most effective people know how to use the resources at their disposal with uncompromising consistency. There is a reason that Y Combinator (one of the world's leading start-up accelerators) prefers non-solo founder applicants, even though there are many examples (including some funded by YC) of successful solo founders. So what is the key? As no one is capable of doing everything alone, it is crucial to know what resources are at your disposal and how to use them effectively. Try to understand what lead-times your peers and clients need in order to be able to help you. Use technology to your advantage. Network when you don't need to, so that you may later be able to benefit from a broader base of contacts when you do need to.

So... how about some feedback?

Success in the work-place depends on many factors but hopefully some of my tips will help you to think of a few ideas and to formulate a concrete set of things to focus on – let me know what you think.

Jeremy Seeff is an English and NY qualified lawyer working at Epstein Rosenblum Maoz (ERM) law firm in Tel Aviv, Israel. Jeremy advises on a broad range of corporate and commercial matters and focuses on: (i) advising start-up companies; and (ii) helping his clients in their inbound and outbound international M&A and financing transactions. Jeremy loves hearing from those setting up businesses or people working in or with Israel. Jeremy is also involved in fostering LGBT networking opportunities in and around Tel Aviv.