We probably spend half our waking hours working. If we don’t like what we do, it spills into our personal lives and has a tremendous impact. If our career and subsequent income don’t give us financial and just reward, we sometimes ask ourselves ‘ What is it all for?’ Financial reward shouldn\’t always be a motivator though, but it is still frightfully critical.
To find your ideal career, you must take control, you must be innovative and you must be disciplined. You must take it on as a full-time job, almost like a project i.e. it has a start and it has a finish. The more planning you put into you career, the better the results and the more you get out of it.
Asking why you should pursue your passion or even look for another job leads to self-doubt. Instead, ask why not? This helps you to identify real obstacles and plan strategies around them.
We are in an age where people are now beginning to choose personal fulfillment over financial gain and remuneration.
The old notion of ‘the job for life’ is long, long gone.
‘Choose living rather than surviving, growing rather than stagnating and developing rather than just existing’,
Career management, career planning can be seen as a challenge for people. You need to have the choice of working in a way that brings out the best in you, so that your talents, skills and abilities are utilized through the form of a job or career’.
Following are seven tips to help you start thinking about, managing and planning your career:
- Write down jobs/careers that you would love to do. Research them and get all the information you can about them. Develop a plan. Consider personal autonomy, try not to consider the cash element straight away.
- Network with people. Talk to people that you know who have knowledge of these jobs. Build up relationships. The business world is becoming more diverse and competitive and the ability to build strong relationships with people is more essential than ever before.
- Let old work colleagues, bosses, friends know what your thinking about. They may well know someone who can help you. Over 60% of recruitment is done through word of mouth. When is the last time you have sat down with someone to talk about your career aspirations?
- Talk to career transition organisation’s who can help you how to go about what you want to do and are looking for.
- Update your CV. Develop Cover Letters and Target letters that are tailored around the organisation types that you wish to work in / for. There is always room to improve your CV and Letters, to re-design them and re-word them, so that probable employers want to meet with you. That’s what these documents are – an invitation from you to meet with a potential, prospective employer.
- Read the newspaper’s job advertisements and job/career articles. These make excellent reading and improve your career planning vocabulary and knowledge and outline different perspectives on career life.
- Consider improving your skills, doing a further education course. Know yourself and what else you need to do to achieve your ideal career.
Managing your career is a full-time job…treat it like so…!