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Almost everyone has some sort of significant goal or aspiration they hope to achieve in the future. For a lot of people, this includes some type of long-term career plan or dream job that they would like to obtain.
While these major objectives may seem difficult or even impossible to achieve, they can appear much more manageable through the use of a career plan.
The future can provide an extremely uncertain ride, but having a solid career plan in place can serve as a reliable roadmap to get you wherever you would like to go.
Here are three reasons why you should have a solid career plan.
Career Planning Helps Us Grow
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Having a realistic career plan in place is often an essential part of career growth, and our personal growth and development. Without goals to strive for, most people find it difficult to stray from the easy norm or gain skills which make them a more valuable commodity in the business world.
If your career isn't growing, it's dying! Failing to put together a career plan that will help you grow professionally could lead to a career crisis.
By planning for the future and setting a specific timeline for accomplishing the things you want to achieve, you will find that your career plan is an effective way to ensure you never lose motivation along the way. Between the accountability of having fixed objectives and the inspiration you'll receive when you attain your career growth goals, your career plan is an opportunity to maximize your true potential.
A Career Plan Will Help You Land Your Dream Job
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If one of the important destinations in your future is a much-desired job or position, a career plan truly is a roadmap to help you reach it. Job boards are full of available positions, but often the most desired and competitive jobs require a significant amount of prerequisite experience or education. It's very rare that someone will simply fall into their dream job.
Most commonly, it takes years of planning your career growth, hard work, and even a little bit of luck to develop your current situation into the career of your dreams. By isolating exactly what you'll need to accomplish in order to be a candidate for the job you truly want, fulfilling the needed tasks will become much easier and your chances of success will be much higher.
A Career Plan Is Essential To Planning Your Retirement
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Having a realistic career plan in place is not just about work. In fact, a great career plan should have a much longer view. Unless your dream job is something that you want to do every single day of your life, your career plan can also be used to determine the steps needed to smoothly enter into retirement down the road.
Incorporating a rudimentary knowledge of financial planning into your career goals and setting yourself up for retirement through proper savings and the allocation of investments will serve as a great way to wrap up your long-term career plan.
Working in your dream job may be where you would like to see yourself in ten years, but what about when you're in your 60s or 70s?
Career planning may intimidate some people who are unsure about the direction they would like to take decades down the road. Instead of being a set-in-stone list of rules and objectives you must follow, your career plan should instead be viewed as simply a way to get what you want.
As frequently as our wants and needs change, the tasks we must accomplish in order to achieve them change just as fast. Having a career plan can help you design your future the way you would like it, but can also be flexible enough to change when your personal ambitions and goals do.
If you're struggling to create a career plan and grow as a professional, we can help.
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This article was originally published at an earlier date.
Is your job search turning into a grind with no end in sight? It may be time to take a step back and reevaluate your entire approach.
In cold weather climates, the beginning of spring is a time to clean the house and get organized—a practice known as spring cleaning. Through the years, spring cleaning has taken on a larger meaning with people using the time to organize and declutter things in their lives.
For professionals on the job hunt, a little spring cleaning (metaphorically speaking) could be a great way to reinvigorate your job search. Here are a few strategies your job search spring cleaning should include.
Reevaluate Your Job Search Approach
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Make a list of the last handful of jobs you applied for and see if you can identify any positive or negative trends. Consider things like:
How did I learn about this job?
How did I apply for the job?
Did I earn an interview?
What was the ultimate result?
A lot can be learned about your job search approach just by answering these questions and identifying patterns. For example:
Negative Trends
You discovered five jobs through job boards, applied to all of them via the job boards, and never heard back from any of them.
The common pattern here is applying through job boards. This isn't to say that job boards don't serve a purpose in the job search process, but they have their limitations, and you can't run your job search entirely off of them. When you apply through a job board, there's a good chance that your materials will never get past the applicant tracking system (ATS) and never be seen by an actual person.
One simple fix is to research who the hiring manager or recruiter is that posted the position and email your materials to them directly.
The more efficient fix would be to take a proactive approach by putting together a bucket list of companies that you want to work for and start making connections on LinkedIn with people who work at those companies. You may already know some people who work there or have connections that can refer you to some individuals.
This is a great way to network your way onto a company's radar.
Positive Trends
You applied to three jobs via referral, were invited to two job interviews, and made it through multiple rounds of interviews for one of the jobs before being passed over for someone with a little more experience.
The pattern here is that getting referred to a job by a professional acquaintance is a great way to land a job interview. This indicates that you're leveraging your network well and you should continue to focus on your networking efforts.
The next step is to review the interview process and determine what went well and what needs to be improved. Sometimes the interviewer will provide feedback, and that feedback can be valuable. However, not everyone is comfortable with giving feedback.
Chances are you probably have a good idea about areas of improvement and the skills you need to gain. Put together a plan for addressing those shortfalls.
The good news in making it deep into any interview process is that it indicates that the company likes you as a potential employee (even if the timing just wasn't right) and the experience could be a roadmap to a job with that company at a later date, or another similar opportunity elsewhere.
Give Your Resume & Cover Letter Some Much-Needed Attention
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Are you continuously sending similar resumes and cover letters to each job opening with only minor adjustments? If so, your strategy needs some serious spring cleaning.
The reason why it's so important to tailor your resume is that throughout your career, you acquire numerous skills, but the job you're applying for may only be focusing on 6-8 of those skills. In that case, those skills must rise to the top of the resume with quantifiable examples of how you successfully used those skills at previous jobs.
Remember, recruiters go through hundreds of resumes. They need to be able to tell from a quick glance whether or not you're a potential candidate for the position.
While updating your resume, you could also spruce up your LinkedIn profile by highlighting the skill sets that you want to be noticed for by recruiters.
As for writing a good cover letter, the key to success is writing a disruptive cover letter. When you write a disruptive cover letter, you're basically telling a story. The story should focus on how you connect with the particular company and job position. The story could also focus on your personal journey, and how you got to where you currently are in your career.
If your resumes and cover letters aren't unique, now is the time to clean things up and get on track.
Build Your Personal Brand
Just because you're looking for work doesn't mean that you don't have anything to offer. Use previous career experiences and passions to build your personal brand.
Ask yourself, "How do I want other professionals to view me?"
Pick an area of expertise and start sharing your knowledge and experience with your professional network by pushing out content on your LinkedIn and social media accounts. Good content can include blogs, social media posts, and videos.
By sharing content about your experiences and passions, you slowly build your personal brand, and others will start to notice. The content could lead to good discussions with others in your network. It could also lead to reconnecting with connections that you haven't spoken to in years, or making new connections.
You never know when one of these connections could turn into a job lead or referral. The trick is to get on people's radars. So, when you're cleaning up your job search, be sure to build a plan for personal branding.
Maintain Healthy Habits During Your Job Search
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Your job search is important, but it's even more important to know when to pull back and focus on personal health and spending time with family and friends.
There are actually things that you can do for your own enjoyment that could help your job search in the long run, such as:
Grab coffee with a friend - It's good to engage in light conversation with friends during challenging times. And if your job search does come up, remember that most people have been through it themselves and you never know when a friend may provide you with a good idea or lead on a job.
Volunteer - Volunteering is a great way to get involved in the community and help others. In addition, if you develop a little bit of a career gap while looking for a job, you can always talk about how you filled that time volunteering, if you're asked about it during a job interview.
Continue to focus on other passions - Are you a fitness nut? Blogger? Crafter? Continue to do the things that bring you happiness. And if you're in a position to profit from your passion through a freelance job or side hustle, even better!
Spring is the perfect time to clean up and improve your job search so you can land the job you want. If you're struggling to find a job, follow the tips above to reinvigorate your job search—and watch your career blossom!
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This article was originally published at an earlier date.