How to make a career plan for a year and implement it

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Planning, including a career, is now called one of the main ways to build a successful life. Making clear plans allow you not only to understand your own goals but also develop gradually the ways to achieve them, motivate yourself to move forward. As a result, we will learn to plan the day, schedule tasks for weeks and months and understand what we want to achieve this year. The only person who can build your career is you. And one of the most effective tools for this is a career plan. Jobsora.com will help you to create it.

A career plan is a document that defines the planned trajectory to a career goal and the methods to achieve it.

A well-made career plan helps:

  • be focused on your goals;
  • see and measure the progress in achieving your goals;
  • accept responsibility for your career for yourself;
  • concentrate and achieve success.

Jobsora.com offers you to look at the stages of creating a career plan.

1. Create your vision

Be honest and write down what you really want to get from your career. You need to set a big, global goal. It’s recommended to create a vision for the next 5 years. The bravest ones can create the plan for a longer period. It’s important to look at the vision of your career every 2-3 years or even more often.

2. Define your immediate career goal

Write your immediate career goal based on the global vision. This goal must be a step towards achieving the global goal. Create it in a SMART format. It’s necessary to look it through and correct this goal at least once a year — depending on the dynamics of movement and possible changes of external conditions. Correctly set goals help to understand the meaning of your plan as well as to formulate the expected result clearly.

3. Make diagnostics

Make a SWOT analysis of yourself. Try to analyze yourself from different sides: education, skills, experience, competence, interests, values, resources, reputation, personal brand, health, family, environment, the circle of friends, potential, risks. What external and internal factors help you to move towards the goal and what factors can be the obstacle?

4. Create your career plan

Now create a career plan including:

  • the SMART immediate career goal (the term is determined by yourself, at least a year);
  • sub-goals for its implementation;
  • definite tasks/actions to implement each sub-goal;
  • the final term for implementation of each task.

Specify in the list of tasks:

  • building the right reputation — what steps should be done to create the desired reputation;
  • developing of necessary competencies – what courses, training, traineeships, on-the-job training and so on should be undergone in order to develop competencies to the required level;
  • building the relationships with decision-makers – who and how can influence your career and how you should build relationships with them;
  • forming a personal brand — how other people see you, how you want them to see you, what forms of activity you should show in your work, in the life of the company, in the external market in order to form your personal brand;
  • networking – what kind of environment is important to form in order to achieve a career goal, what steps need to be taken to form a productive network of working contacts.

5. Start acting

The last but important step. Even the most elaborating and inspiring plan will not bring results if you don’t start implementing it. Start acting immediately. You have outlined the steps of your plan clearly. Follow them.

Your personal career plan is your vision of the future and your own success. Its proper creation will help you to avoid unnecessary problems and delays in professional growth. To do or not to do is only your decision. But the time spent on it will definitely be worth it. Have no doubt, small steps will definitely lead you to success, every big journey – it’s a lot of ordinary steps. All you have to do is to start acting in order to implement your goals and plans and not to leave them written on the sheet of paper.

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