If you want to land your dream job, get that promotion, or earn a pay raise, you’ve got to get in the game. No one scores from the sidelines. Unfortunately, sometimes it seems most of us leave our competitive drive on the field, and completely forget about it once we hit the office. Some career tracks are naturally competitive – in the military, for instance, you’re weighed directly against your peers for promotion, with only a certain percentage of every rank selected for the next promotion.

If you’re in a career field where the stakes are less immediate, it’s easy to get into a slump. If you have an amicable relationship with your boss and coworkers (absolutely a good thing), it can also be a little too easy to settle for less than your best. Just like we tend to put on a few pounds after we’re married and out of the dating game, sometimes we let our skills stagnate when we’re happily employed. Every stage of the employment process is competitive – from applying, to promotions, to making a career transition. Here are a few tips for helping you score on the job, and attain the prize of a dream career.

1. Stay Curious.

Is your job boring? Tax law and compliance aren’t exactly known as creative industries, but ask any successful professional in these careers and they’ve likely found something about the job that piques their interest every day. If you want to be a competitive employee or job seeker, you need to stay curious – about industry trends, about your career field, and about your coworkers and company. If you get the idea your current job doesn’t involve ‘thinking outside the box’ – maybe it’s time to find a new box to work in. Staying curious is also critically important for active job seekers. How do you survive months of unemployment? By continuing to stay creative and professionally curious, keeping up-to-date on industry publications and company news, and using curiosity to your advantage at networking events.

2. Look the part.

Have you ever seen a baseball player ready to field a pitch only to realize he didn’t have a bat? Of a football player run on the field without a helmet? No, professional athletes know the gear of the game and they show up with it – every time. Professional dress has taken a serious hit in recent years, but that can make looking the part more important than ever. Your boss really may not care about what you wear – in which case a suit, or even a button-down and slacks may be serious overkill. But, if you show up in the same Grateful Dead t-shirt every day, I don’t care how amazing your skills are, you don’t come across as promotion potential. Looking the part applies to every stage of your career. Do you notice that all of the management within your company has a standing golf game once a week? It doesn’t matter if you hate the game, if you’d like to be a manager within that company, you’d better take up golf now. Don’t like the look of your company? Maybe it’s a sign that the job isn’t a good culture fit for you. Better to realize that early and start networking for new positions.

3. Be a leader, not a chameleon.

Being adaptive is a highly sought after quality, but people-pleasers can too easily err on the side of being a social chameleon – which means their opinions, and even personality sway by the day and depending upon who is there. An article in Psychology Today describes it this way:

“…the person may become a sort of “social chameleon,” changing attitudes, opinions, and feelings in an effort to fit in and be accepted. From a leadership perspective, this can mean the leader is highly sensitive and responsive to the social climate (and the leader changes views depending on the crowd, and may appear “wishy-washy”). Socially, the extremely high self-monitor fits in, but we never get a sense of who the social chameleon really is or what he or she believes in and stands for.”

Not everyone can be the team captain, but everyone has a role. Know what yours is, based on your strengths and weaknesses, and don’t try to change just to fit in. This also applies to active job seekers. You should certainly advertise your affinity for a particular company, or your strong desire to join the team, but you shouldn’t feel a need to lie in your interview to impress.

4. Your co-workers are your friends – and your competition.

Competitive athletes are used to having a friendly rapport with their teammates, while simultaneously contending with them for position and authority. Competing with your co-workers should be in the same, friendly vein. Putting a knife in someone’s back just to look better for a promotion will establish a professional reputation you don’t want. But try to work with coworkers who keep you on your toes and who you can learn from professionally.  Being the smartest guy or gal in the room only sounds good. The best career move is to surround yourself with other professionals you can learn from and respect. Then you’ll truly be able to feel a rising tide lift all boats.

5. Keep an active and updated online network.

If you think every year a pay raise will magically appear, and every three years new promotions and management opportunities will arise, and your boss will always have your best career interests in heart, it’s time to think again. You are your own career manager, and one of the best ways to manage it well is to maintain an active, updated online career network. Social media is a double-edged sword for security cleared professionals – if you’re rightly hesitant about posting your career details online, keep in mind that ClearanceJobs is the only career site with end-to-end HTTPS, and we never share user data with other sites.

It may seem a bit extreme to think of your career as a competition – but as anyone who has ever been unemployed or endured a difficult career transition can attest, careers are competitive. Consider it a friendly competition rather than a bare knuckles brawl. Competing on the job can be fun – especially when you win with a career you love.

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Lindy Kyzer is the director of content at ClearanceJobs.com. Have a conference, tip, or story idea to share? Email lindy.kyzer@clearancejobs.com. Interested in writing for ClearanceJobs.com? Learn more here.. @LindyKyzer