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 a true story as told to DiversityJobs, where you can find career interviews for the job you've been looking at and available positions in your desired field.
I have worked as an Event Planner for a major university for over a decade. I plan university events, including alumni get-togethers at sporting events, annual employee celebrations, donor fund-raising events, student-parent visitation events, and student orientation events.
Planning an event usually involves a number of steps, from the initial concept to meeting with major event participants and leaders to coordinating with catering staff and logistics coordinators.
As a university event planner, I oversee the entire project from start to finish. When a department decides they want an event, they submit a requisition to me and I schedule a meeting with their event leaders to develop an event concept plan. I work with them on the event theme, the highlights of the event, menu planning, event site, and identifying the participants. Throughout the entire process, I meet with the departmental liaison on a regular basis to make sure we are meeting scheduled milestones leading up to the event date.
Probably the biggest misconception about event planning is that it is all about parties. In reality, I plan many events that have nothing to do with parties at all. Frequently, I plan what would be the equivalent of corporate meetings.
Event planning involves a great deal of attention to detail and a great deal of hard work. It is common for me to work long hours in the days leading up to a major event, coordinating with caterers, facilities equipment managers and decorators. For smaller meetings and events, I meet with caterers and department leaders several times to make sure all of the details have been covered and addressed.
I find working as an event planner very satisfying. In the past, I worked at administrative office jobs, but was bored sitting around doing the same thing all the time. As an event planner, I get to do different things all the time. Although I spend time in my office doing paperwork and writing out specific plans for each event and documenting the process, I also get to spend lots of time meeting with people, going to different event sites and being very physically active.
If there were one thing I could change about my job it would be the amount of paperwork I have to attend to daily. Since I work for a university, there are specific protocols I have to follow to make sure everything I do is documented.
For example, when I have a meeting, I have to take minutes and then follow-up every conversation with an email to all of the meeting participants. I also have to document how much time I spend on every single activity I engage in so that the so department of the project I am working on gets charged accordingly. This can be very tedious at times.
I actually got started as an event planner completely by accident. I was working in Human Resources and they needed someone to help with the annual employee holiday party and I stepped up to help. I found that I really enjoyed working on the event and did as much as I could to participate in the process.
When the position opened up for the event planner, it happened to come through our department first, so I went ahead and applied and was delighted the supervisor remembered me participating in the employee holiday party planning. He was so impressed with my enthusiasm and I had helped friends and family plan large events in the past (weddings, family reunions, etc.) he took a chance and hired me. It also helped I am an avid cook and enjoy entertaining a great deal.
One of the things I have really learned is necessary for this job is excellent communication skills. I have to be able to help department managers make major decisions about what kind of event they want and nail down all the details so I can deliver the exact event experience they desire.
Often, this means that I have to be able to tactfully guide them in their decision-making process and make sure that their choices meet with university guidelines about acceptable activities; for example, our university does not allow dancing or alcoholic beverages at university-sponsored events, which can occasionally be an issue for student or alumni events.
Probably the most stressful part of my job is dealing with department managers who want an event but who keep changing their plans. They do not understand the amount of coordination that is required to plan a large event.
For example, they may keep changing what they want on printed materials, such as invitations or program hand-outs, or they may repeatedly change their minds about what menu items they want for the event. With each change, additional time is needed to meet with the other departments or vendors that provide services. Additionally, it costs extra money to make changes and can have a huge impact on the event budget.
In many cases, I am held responsible for managing the event budget, so it can be difficult to tell a manager that they cannot make wanted changes simply because their budget will not allow it.
Although I got into event planning by accident, I have taken many business and hospitality college courses along the way to improve my skills. For anyone wanting to become an event planner, I suggest at least an Associate degree in some aspect of the hospitality industry.
Additionally, I think basic accounting is helpful, because you will be required to work with budgets and should have a good understanding of fiscal management. Other skills that are mandatory for success as an event planner include excellent communication skills, time management skills and project planning abilities.
I love what I do for a living. I make over $70,000 a year and have four weeks of vacation every year. One of those weeks is during the winter break, when the university shuts down. While that may seem like a huge salary in most of the United States, where I live it is not actually super-high. I would love to make more money, but it is enough for my needs at this time in my life.
If I could see into the future and write my own ticket, I would branch out and have my own event planning service. I would love to work with large companies planning corporate events and also offer services for weddings, family reunions and other events. I would also love to have a full-service event planning business that includes catering, party equipment rentals, photography, and music.
JustJobs.com is ajob 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.Event planning business image from Shutterstock
