As the year draws to a close, we reach a natural reflection point where we look back over the last 12 months and think about where we’ve been, what we’ve achieved and what goals remain incomplete.
To help you take stock and evaluate your working life, it’s worth asking yourself a few key questions:
- Are you doing the job you want to be doing? Or at least on the right path towards your ultimate role?
If you’re unsure on how to assess this, take some time to evaluate what you love about your current role and write a list of areas you would like to see change. This should help guide you in terms of the remit of your role. Speak to a Course Advisor for further help. - Do you enjoy your daily working life?
If the answer to this is an out-and-out no, then a significant change could be in order. If you do enjoy your work in the main, you could look to make some smaller tweaks to up the enjoyment level. - Are you looking to gain a promotion in the next 12 months?
If so, do you have all the necessary attributes and skills needed for the next level role? What are these and how can you go about achieving this goal? - What do I need to do to take the next step in my career?
Look at what is out there in the career market, what are job descriptions highlighting? How can you obtain a higher role based on your experience and skills?
Once you have these key thoughts formalised, from here you can assess your next move, set your goal(s) and work out what it will take for you to reach them by creating a step-by-step action plan.
Next to each goal, think about the steps needed to succeed. One of the most important things whilst assessing your career resolutions is to be realistic. Setting yourself a huge target which could be deemed unachievable will only serve to demotivate and could knock your other, more achievable goals, off-track, so break everything into small steps.
Say for example your goal is that you want to completely change career, firstly start by clarifying exactly what you want to do. Do some research into the role and what’s involved; also look at the local job market to see what employers are looking for. Assess your skills and check if there are any gaps that you could fill by training or other further education. Work out what budget you have available and your timescale plan to ensure any changes can be implemented around your current lifestyle.
Once your plan is in place and you start to work through each step, it’s vitally important to keep yourself motivated along the way. Celebrate your successes, set out some small rewards for yourself at key points in your journey to keep you on track.
So, if you’ve got a little bit of time free over the festive period, use the time wisely, don’t give up and you never know where you could be this time next year!
