Pocketblog has gone back to basics. This is part of an extended management course.
Do you have a career plan? You should. Even if you have not charted out the rest of your life, you should have a shrewd idea of how long you want to stay where you are now; doing what you are doing; and what next.
Here are some exercises that will help you to plan out this and the next stages of your career.
Exercise 1: Getting to Grips with a New Job
Answer these three questions:
- What is the true essence of your job?
- What is one thing you can achieve quickly to start to build a good reputation?
- Who are the people you most need to get to know and to influence?
Exercise 2: Getting Ahead in your Current Job
Set yourself three objectives:
- Three people to get to know during the next three months
- A substantial opportunity to be innovative, take the lead or make something happen
- Some training, development or learning that will position you for a step forward
Exercise 3: Refreshing your Attitude to your Current Job
In ‘Same Job: New Job’, we looked at how to spice up your attitude to your current job, if a move is not on the cards. Read that blog and choose three petals of the Flower Model of Job Satisfaction. For each one, decide on one action you will carry out, to boost the way you feel about your job.
Exercise 4: What Next?
You may not yet have a strategic vision of how you want your career to proceed and where you want to get to. If this is the case, ask yourself the question: ‘what do I want from my career?’
Write this down as a heading on a sheet of paper one evening. The next day, get up early, make a cuppa, then sit and write anything that comes into your mind onto the page. Don’t censor or try to organise it. Just get the ideas down.
Repeat two or three times and then, when you have a quiet hour to spare, go through it all and see what is there that makes real sense to you.
Now you will have the basis for deciding what needs to come next. Put together a plan for:
- on-the-job learning
- continuing professional development
- taking on projects
- looking for new opportunities
Exercise 5: Continuing Professional Development
If you are a member of a professional or trade body, this will almost certainly come with your chosen career. Even so, there will be discretionary modules and units, so make choices based on what you want to prepare yourself for. If you are not part of such a membership organisation, then look at the training your employer can offer, maybe your trade union has some training you can use, and also look at local FE colleges and the courses they can provide. You may also want to look at independent training providers who run open programmes.
The trick is to build a logical case that will show your employer what they will gain by investing in putting you on that training. Be clear about the facts and ask the provider for help in identifying the workplace benefits of their course.
Exercise 6: A Career Change?
There is an excellent set of resources for this at the Open University careers advisory service site.
