Happy New Year!

If you’re thinking about career goals for the year ahead, below is an article I wrote for the January edition of Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce’s ‘Business Comment’ magazine:

Most people spend more time planning a holiday than planning their career. If something goes wrong with your holiday you’ve usually got insurance to fall back on. If something goes wrong with your career, what’s your plan?

The new year is traditionally a time to set goals – why not put some effort into your career goals for the year ahead? If you’re at risk of redundancy, or affected by a merger, acquisition, or restructuring, you need a plan. If you’re an employer, or a manager responsible for the careers of others, you have a role to play in managing their careers too.

Despite everything that’s happening in the economy at present, the fundamentals of career management haven’t really changed in the last hundred years. As early as 1909, Frank Parsons, an American social reformer was counselling people on three things: know yourself; know the market for your skills and abilities; and know how to successfully marry the two.

Here are some tips on how to cover those three aspects of essential career management:

1. Understand what you’re really good at and what you enjoy at work. What conditions need to be in place for you to perform at your best? What kind of people and environments help you achieve peak performance? If you’re stuck for answers, consider asking trusted colleagues and friends what they observe in you when you’re performing at your best.
2. Explore the market for what you have to offer. Use your network, colleagues, friends and family, or tools like LinkedIn.com to research the kind of work people with your abilities are doing. Find out what’s happening in other sectors, even in other geographies, and determine where your skill set is in demand. Don’t be put off by negative reports about the economy – there is always demand for good people, you just need to know where to look.
3. In terms of landing that dream job, within your current organisation or elsewhere, recent research amongst job seekers has shown that more proactive people find a new role almost twice as quickly as those who just browse for jobs. They are clear on what they want and focused on where and how they can add value, and they employ five or more routes into the job market – don’t just rely on job boards and newspaper ads. Use networking, trade publications, agencies, speculative applications, etc.

 And if you’re an employer, discuss all of the above with your staff. Exit interviews show that, when people leave an organisation for career advancement, their previous employer could have held onto them if their manager had been more proactive with career development discussions. There will be some people you want to keep and some whose career progression lies outside your organisation. Proactively managing their careers can have a huge ROI for you in terms of increased productivity, improved retention and more engagement.