Here are two things that will happen to you when you apply these exciting alternative career goals to your current situation over the next year . . . you'll stand out more to your current employer and other companies . . . you'll be a much better candidate if you decide to get into the job market in the months ahead.

So what are these 5 powerful alternative career goals that can position you for success over the upcoming months? Here they are:

1. Take a qualitative rather than quantitative approach to your job. For example, try to feel differently about the people around you. Instead of trying to acquire quantitatively more network contacts, spend more time with the ones you have and discover more about what they want and need. Decide to feel qualitatively more connected with them.

2. Clarify your future growth. Visualize where you want to be in one, three and five years. What kind of job, where is it located, whom do you want to work for and with, and what are your compensation expectations? As one senior executive said recently, ?You have to know where you want to get to have any real hope of getting there.

3. Excel in your current job. The best way to be visible and rise higher in your career is by being passionate about your work and doing it exceptionally well. One executive recruiter said that when you excel other people will talk about you. And he, for one, looks for and follows comers who stay passionate and focused.

4. Market yourself within your company. If you're doing an outstanding job and senior managers aren't noticing you, maybe you're not talking enough about yourself. Look, no one likes a braggart--that won't help. But it's possible to get the word out about your accomplishments indirectly or directly without seeming to be boastful.

For example, you can single out and praise a subordinate or your team in an email memo to your boss with copies to other managers. Acknowledging their success raises their visibility and puts the spotlight on you as their manager.

5. Redouble your efforts to develop relationships with new people. This is just another way to say that you have to build your contact bank or expand your network. Why? Because the most valuable resource you have is not your resume or work history, but your access to a diverse range of folks who can be helpful to you in many different ways.

One senior executive told us that he makes a strategic networking call to someone he doesn't know very well and arranges to meet with them. When he calls them he mentions that he heard about their accomplishments and would like to learn more about them and their career.

We call these ?alternative? career goals because they go way beyond the passive ?traditional? ways of thinking about career advancement. The old-fashioned way takes a quantitative approach as if doing more of the same gets you ahead. Instead, you're just moving in place, only you're moving a lot faster. In other words you're getting nowhere fast.

If you're serious about getting ahead, then now's the time to join the alternative job search and non-traditional career advancement revolution!