Wednesday, January 4, 2012

New Year: New Career Goals

Whether you’re happily employed or searching for a job, the New Year is an ideal time to set or “reset” your career goals. For many, the holidays provide some much needed time off to rejuvenate, refresh, and re-focus, which can help you to hit the ground running, professionally, come the New Year.

Reflecting on 2011

Carve out some time to reflect on 2011—what went well and not so well, professionally. If you set annual goals for 2011, did you meet those goals? What professional accomplishments are you most proud of? Did you already add these accomplishments to your resume, or do you still need to do that? Can you identify areas in your career that need improving? If so, these can turn into career development opportunities and goals for 2012.

Setting Career Goals for 2012

A year shouldn’t pass without you learning new things and growing professionally, and it’s these experiences that should be factored into renewing or tweaking your career goals for the New Year.

To generate the best results, approach your goal-setting task diligently and enthusiastically. Your goals should be specific and attainable while still causing you to stretch a bit. For example, you might set a goal to create a professional profile on a social networking site, like Linkedin.com, by February 1, 2012, or complete a project management course within the first quarter of the New Year.

Whatever goals you set for yourself, you’ll want to develop a tactical plan broken down into incremental, actionable steps to help you achieve each goal.

Goals—both personal and professional—require your commitment of time and effort. Your New Year career goals should motivate and excite you and advance your professional success.

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