Career Goal Setting

After working with hundreds of clients, I can say with confidence that the biggest predictor of career success is attitude.

No matter what the labor market throws your way, or what barriers to employment people may face, those who are willing to do what it takes - including those tasks that are difficult and nerve wracking - to reach their career goals, find work fastest and are happiest with the jobs they find.

So am I saying that if you're struggling in your job search, you must just have a "bad attitude"? Not at all. But I am saying that if you truly want to reach your career goals, and you're struggling to make it happen, it would be wise to have a very honest conversation with yourself about the steps you've taken so far to reach your career goals.

Are you challenging yourself to be assertive and network for job leads, or are you simply applying to advertised jobs? Have you committed to staying up to date in your industry or are you missing important skills that employers value? Are you focused on getting results, which may mean doing tasks that are challenging, or are you merely focusing on activity, which often means staying busy working on tasks that are simple but may or may not get results?

People who find career success feel in control of their own success. They don't shy away from the challenging tasks that lead to career and job search success. That doesn't mean they don't become nervous or frustrated in tough economic conditions, but they accept what must be done, and focus on the tasks that get results.

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What Color Is Your Parachute?: A Practical Manual for Job-hunters and Career-Changers by Richard Nelson Bolles is a comprehensive guide to choosing and finding not just any job, but a job that is a great fit with your interests, values, abilities and personal needs. It covers everything from how to write great resumes and find job leads through to how to make good career choices that fit your own unique set of characteristics and circumstances.

This book is the first career counseling book I ever read. I read it before I became a career counselor, when I was in the middle of my own career transition. In a lot of ways I was my own first client, and this book helped me to understand the considerations that go into effective career changes and job searching.

What Color is Your Parachute? is full of exercises that help you to assess your own career-related needs and understand how your personality and values impact your job satisfaction in ways that many people never consider. This book is so full of resources, you do need to be a bit careful that you don't get so focused on the self assessment activities in the book that you let your job search get side tracked. However, the book is set up so that you can be very thorough and do all of the activities, or simply chose the ones that are most valuable to you.

I have read a lot of books about making career choices, and What Color is Your Parachute? is, hands down, my favorite general career guide. It tackles all of the major career-related issues in depth and it is updated every year, so it is always current (if you need to be budget conscious, look for the version from the previous year, it will still be current, but it will typically also be a little less expensive than the current version).

There are other books that do a great job of focusing on one specific career management topic. However, if you can only buy one, all encompassing book to help you manage your career and your job search, What Color is Your Parachute? is the book that I would recommend.

Making a career change can feel pretty daunting. You may feel that you have limited options, or you may feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of possible directions you could take. You may have no idea where to start, or you may have a good sense of what it will take to change careers but you're stuck in the comfortable routine of your present life.

How ever you are feeling about making a career change, know that it is absolutely possible, but it must but done with some smart planning. Before you quit your current job to chase your dream, do some good research, preparation and strategic planning.

• Determine what skills, education and experience employers expect from new employees in your new field.
  
  
• Determine whether you have adequate skills, qualifications and experience to be marketable and competitive in your new field. If you do not, map out a plan for acquiring the skill and experience you need.
  
  
• Set up some informational interviews with people who currently do the job you'd like to do. Find out what their day to day tasks involve and ensure the job is really what you imagine it to be.
  
  
• Determine whether employers are currently hiring in your new field. Look for advertised jobs and talk to people in the field to determine the current labor market conditions in the industry.
  
  
• Find out how much money you can expect to make in the new job and ensure that salary meets your needs and expectations. If you'll need to take a pay cut to launch your new career, try living on that much money for a few months so there will be no big financial surprises.
  
  

Making a mid life career change is common and can be very rewarding. I have written several tips on making a career change at my main site, you can find more career change advice and tips here.

Decision making is a very personal process, and there is no single correct way to come to a good decision. You may be tend to use very tangible, concrete information for your decision making, or you may be more of an intuitive person who uses information that is abstract and theoretical to inform your decisions.

Your actual decision making may be made through feeling, that is, using empathy and harmony as priorities for your choices. On the other hand, you may come to your decisions through thinking, using a more detached, logical approach.

Society tend to value the logical, thinking style of decision making combined with the use of tangible, concrete information gathering. However, there is also a lot to be said for using more abstract intuition to gather information, and making decisions from a feeling perspective as well.

All ways of making decisions are valid, and it is important to trust your own preferred style of decision making.

You'll find decision making tools at:
Career Decision Test - Decisional Balance
and
Decision Making Confidence - Choose It!