If you are in the midst of making a critical decision concerning your career, you are not alone. Career decisions can be downright overwhelming — potentially throwing you off course and impacting almost every aspect of your life.
Many jobseekers this year will be changing industries, fields, and roles — some by choice, and others — not always fuelled by choice. Company restructurings and career transitions are quite common.
But without a sufficient plan and long-term vision in place comprised of both short-term and long-term goals, you may lose traction with enhancing your career development and success.
This spring is an opportune time for embracing growth in your career and positioning yourself for your next career milestone.
Take Time for Reflection and Brand Awareness Concerning Your Career
Take time to evaluate your core strengths, your unique value and brand, driving factors, interests, experience, and marketable skills.
What have you learned and what things have you achieved that you are most proud of? What could you have done better?
Many careers evolve from translating your interests and skills into a role that can reflect a rewarding career.
To some professionals, passion and purpose are not always the core driving factors in their careers. As a Certified Employment Strategist, I encounter clients that work in careers that fuel their passion and purpose, yet they still revert to the drawbacks. Focusing solely on only income may lead you to feel unfulfilled after some time. You may feel that you have reached a pinnacle of success on a material level, but after some time, this may stabilize and lead you to seek other driving factors to fulfill your career success.
Today’s career planning is more holistic, growth-focused, flexible, and involves a myriad of factors that shape careers such as life choices and personal and professional needs. Your career needs and brand along with the volatile labour market are ever-changing and expanding. It is important to keep up with and navigate these changes on a consistent basis.
It is important to weigh the pros and cons along with your priorities while evaluating your values and how they are driving factors in selecting career choices and your ideal work environment, which are critical factors to sustaining career success.
Here are some things to consider when conducting career planning this spring:
If you want to figure out where you want to go next, first start with an assessment of where you have been.
Is there a common thread in your career history?
Are you using the skills, education, and training you have? If not, why?
Set career goals for yourself.
Where do you want to be 1 year, 3 years, and 5 years from now?
What do you need to do to get there?
Take time to document your work accomplishments.
What was the most important thing you did in your job in the last year?
What was the impact of that accomplishment — did you save your company money, or bring in revenue?
Can you quantify the financial impact?
Evaluate relationships with your co-workers, bosses, and those you supervise.
Do you need to make any adjustments?
Could you strengthen these relationships? How?
Think about what you would really like your life to be like.
If money and time posed no concern, how would you spend your days?
Determine what your #1 priority is (personally) for the next 12 months.
What is the one thing you absolutely want to accomplish, see, or experience in the next year?
Professionally, what do you want to be different in the next year?
What do you want to be doing more of, and how can you get there?
Ask yourself: Am I doing the things I need to do to get where I want to go?
Write down what kind of support you need — personally and professionally — to reach the goals you have established for yourself.
Start an accomplishments journal, brag book, log, or journal to document your triumphs and your challenges. Think Situation-Action-Result.
Track all your milestones and challenges as a means of reflection, progress monitoring, and continuous improvement during your career.
Consider the fact that this information is also valuable in building a stellar resume package and in excelling in interviews.
Reflection and brand awareness are the keys to driving meaningful change.
Gain traction and support with proactive career planning. Contact Creative Horizons Communications and prepare yourself for your next growth-focused career milestone! Think creatively and visualize a new career horizon.