10 Tips for Successful Career Planning
Are you a good planner, but not a good implementer? Do you begin strong, but get sidetracked along the way? It takes work to put together a career plan. You are combining courage, vision, and the specifics of what needs to happen when.
Here are 10 tips to successful career planning :
1. Make Career Planning an Annual Event
By making career planning an annual event, you will feel more secure in your career choice and direction — and you’ll be better prepared for the many uncertainties and difficulties that lie ahead in all of our jobs and career.
2. Map Your Path Since Last Career Planning
Once you’ve mapped your past, take the time to reflect on your course — and note why it looks the way it does. Are you happy with your path? Could you have done things better? What might you have done differently? What can you do differently in the future?
3. Reflect on Your Likes and Dislikes, Needs and Wants
Change is a factor of life; everybody changes, as do our likes and dislikes. Something we loved doing two years ago may now give us displeasure. So always take time to reflect on the things in your life — not just in your job — that you feel most strongly about.
4. Examine Your Pastimes and Hobbies
Career planning provides a great time to also examine the activities you like doing when you’renot working. It may sound a bit odd, to examine non-work activities when doing career planning, but it’s not. Many times your hobbies and leisurely pursuits can give you great insight into future career paths.
5. Make Note of Your Past Accomplishments
Sometimes reviewing your past accomplishments will reveal forgotten successes, one or more which may trigger researching and planning a career shift so that you can be in a job that allows you to accomplish the types of things that make you most happy and proud.
6. Look Beyond Your Current Job for Transferable Skills
Some workers get so wrapped up in their job titles that they don’t see any other career possibilities for themselves. Every job requires a certain set of skills, and it’s much better to categorize yourself in terms of these skill sets than be so myopic as to focus just on job titles.
7. Review Career and Job Trends
Everyone makes his or her own job and career opportunities, so that even if your career is shrinking, if you have excellent skills and know how to market yourself, you should be able to find a new job. However, having information about career trends is vital to long-term career planning success.
8. Set Career and Job Goals
Develop a roadmap for your job and career success. Can you be successful in your career without setting goals? Of course. Can you be even more successful through goal-setting? Most research says yes.
9. Explore New Education/Training Opportunities
Take the time to contemplate what types of educational experiences will help you achieve your career goals. Look within your company, your professional association, your local universities and community colleges, as well as online distance learning programs, to find potential career-enhancing opportunities — and then find a way achieve them.
10. Research Further Career/Job Advancement Opportunities
One of the really fun outcomes of career planning is picturing yourself in the future. Where will you be in a year? In five years? A key component to developing multiple scenarios of that future is researching career paths.
