A career resolution is exactly what it sounds like: a resolution for your career intended to help you grow into a better professional. At Work It DAILY, we believe that you need to work on your career every day (yes, you do, in fact, need to "work it daily"). So, everyone should make a career resolution or two along with those other ambitious personal resolutions. They can be little things like learning a new skill or growing your professional network, or bigger goals like landing a promotion or getting a new job.
But how do you know what kind of career resolutions to make?
You can begin by asking yourself, "Am I where I want to be in my career?" If your answer is "no," you need to take a closer look at your career goals.
Here are five more career questions you should be asking yourself this new year to figure out how to grow your career and become the professional you know you can be.
1. Am I Proud Of My Job Title?
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You could be a janitor or a neurosurgeon, it doesn't matter. If you aren't proud of what you do for a living, there's something missing: passion and purpose.
Career burnout is real, but sometimes it's deeper than that. Our passion at 25 won't necessarily be our passion at 40. And that's okay.
When we are passionate about what we do, we are proud because we are doing what we think is important, what we love doing. We feel a sense of purpose. We are adding value to and making a difference in this crazy world—in a small, but significant way.
Every job is important. No matter what your job title is, if you aren't proud of it, and don't feel like you can leverage your strengths as a professional in the position, you should absolutely change that. Identify that one problem you want to find a solution to and go after it. What are you waiting for?
Remember, the only bad job is the one you aren't passionate about, the one that isn't allowing you to leverage your professional strengths and reach your potential.
If you don't know what your professional strengths are or what kind of work you'd find purposeful and fulfilling, we recommend taking our free career quizzes.
Take the quizzes now to learn your unique combination of professional strengths and how they can help you get better career results so you can be proud of what you do.
2. Do I Feel Secure In My Career?
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This is a bit different from job security. Actually, job security doesn't exist. Every job is temporary. Think you can stay in the same job for decades and then retire? Think again. While that may have been commonplace for past generations, today's workforce and job market are completely different than what they were a decade or two ago.
So what does it mean to feel secure in our careers? When we believe as professionals that we can add value wherever we are.
You are a business-of-one. A company won't want to invest in you if they don't know the kinds of services you provide, the kind of value you could add to the organization, and the problems you could solve for them. Here are some examples of questions that will help you determine if you're secure in your career:
- Are you adding value at your current job?
- Are you honing your skills, expanding your network, and building your personal brand?
- Do you feel confident that if you lost your job, you'd be able to find a comparable one in the same field?
- Do you feel confident you'd be able to demonstrate to potential employers how you add value?
Since every job is temporary, it's extremely important to constantly work on our careers and ask ourselves these questions frequently so we always feel secure in our businesses-of-one.
3. Will I Be Able To Achieve Wealth?
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When most people think of "wealth," they think of dollar signs and anything that you can attach a monetary value to. Our jobs help us build wealth. We're not going to tell you that money isn't important. Of course it is! It allows you to live the life you want to live. In many ways, money equals freedom.
But the truth is, there are other forms of wealth that are more important that you can't attach any monetary value to.
Real wealth comes in the form of family, friends, hobbies, experiences, knowledge, and community. If you don't have these things, money will never fill that void.
So, is your career allowing you to build this type of wealth? The intangible kind? Or are your relationships suffering because of your job? Is your work-life balance nonexistent? Do you have any time to pursue hobbies, learn, or volunteer?
Your career should never inhibit you from achieving real wealth. The best job isn't the one that pays the most. It's the one that pays the bills and gives you enough time to live, too.
4. Do I Have Any Regrets?
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Just asking ourselves this question can be difficult because maybe we don't want to know the answer. Acknowledging that you regret something in your life is the first step to making a change. Guess what? There's still time to chase your dreams!
If you do have regrets, that doesn't mean you haven't been a successful professional. That also doesn't mean you haven't had a good career. You could be the most successful person, but if you never got up the courage to start that business, make that career change, or go back to school, you'll most likely think, "What if?" for the rest of your life.
You'll never know if you don't try. Don't be afraid of failure. Life is just one big experiment, and it's your job to learn from those experiments. That's how you discover what works and what doesn't. That's how you discover what's possible.
And even if you do "fail," that's an incredibly more valuable experience than waiting out the clock on a mediocre career. So, don't give up on your dreams just yet.
5. Can I Reach My Full Potential In This Role? In This Career?
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When we feel like we have more to contribute to society, that's a sign we haven't yet reached our full potential. Do you feel like you're wasting your potential at your current job? Do you think you'd reach your full potential in another career?
Really think about what you want your professional legacy to be. It's a lot harder to get up in the morning when you don't find fulfillment in your work. When it comes time for you to retire, are you going to look back on your career and feel like you could have accomplished much, much more with those 50 years?
Everyone has unique gifts, skills, and expertise. When we focus on developing ourselves as individuals, as businesses-of-one, it's a lot easier to share those things with the world. Give yourself a chance to reach your full potential. If you haven't taken our free quizzes yet, your results will help you do just that. You may be surprised by what you can accomplish.
Before you get back into the same routine at work this year, we hope you take a few minutes to ask yourself these career questions. Listen carefully to how you answer them. You may need to make a career resolution or two.
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This is the career story of a career planning facilitator as told to LatPro. This site features real stories from Hispanic professionals in a myriad of professions. If you have considered a career in the employment industry, read on to learn what the job is really like from this Career Planning Facilitator. Visit LatPro for more interviews with employment professionals including one from a Refugee Employer Services Representative a College Career Counselor and many others.
I am a Career Planning Facilitator for a local government employment facility that oversees workforce development and adult education. For the past two years, I've worked directly with clients who are largely displaced workers looking for employment. I'd describe myself as patient, tenacious and efficient, three things that are an absolute must for this type of work.
Because I am a female Caucasian and the facility I work in is largely run by other women, sexual discrimination is not an issue.
My job is a fairly complex; I offer services for displaced workers including but not limited to: job planning, assisting with job seeking and applications, helping to find appropriate remedial training or post-secondary education for eventual employment, and a number of other tasks that all cater to helping a person find a job through our programs or partner facilities.
When rating my job on a satisfaction scale of 1-10, I would frankly admit that my satisfaction level is somewhere in the mid-range of 5-6. The situation could be improved with better budgeting, more efficient systems for processing paperwork and more dedicated people. Despite maneuvering around office politics, I do get satisfaction out of knowing I am doing all I can to help a person get back on their feet and find a new job. There is no better news I can receive than getting a "thank you" letter from someone who has just landed a new job or completed training that will enable them to be employed.
I was offered the position when I attended the adult education program with my husband to help him with his remedial math skills after his automotive plant closed its doors in 2009. Had I known then what I did now, I could have helped dozens of people at a much earlier stage in the entire career training and career placement process; the training I received was largely self-directed and resources trickled in slowly and reluctantly from co-workers. However, because I come from a blue collar working family myself, I understand the situation many of my clients are in, and have been able to reach them on a deeper level than many of my white collar co-workers who do tend to "talk down" to laborers and tradesmen.
Dealing with the inefficiency of upper management, the money wasted on luncheons, parties and expensive hotel rooms during conferences has nearly made me resign several times. I've worked alongside those with PhD's who could not manage to get simple reports done correctly or on time. This inefficiency cost several co-workers their jobs. I've also had to come to terms the sad fact that there are some cognitively impaired displaced workers whom I've not been able to help due to program restrictions and the simple fact they will need directed, one-on-one training for re-employment that I was not able to give them, which was possibly the hardest lesson to learn.
Dealing with stressed out and desperate clients makes my job a demanding position that requires an incredible amount of compassion and patience. I make $11 per hour, though some of my co-workers make up to three times that amount. I do not receive vacation time and I have minimal benefits.
If I were referring a friend or family member into this line of work, I would be frank about the absolute need for time management skills, computer skills, and patience while dealing with customers. Some college might be necessary for learning the basics of spreadsheet software. The working world has little to due with books and texts. Common sense, unfortunately, is not very common. It is likely the oddest thing I've had to witness time and time again at work.
In five years, I would like to move on from this field of work and pursue other interests more directly focused in the adult education field.
JustJobs.com is a job search engine that finds job listings from company career pages, other job boards, newspapers and associations. With one search, they help you find the job with your name on it.Choosing candidate for job image from Shutterstock
