7 Career Questions to begin the New Year

The New Year is a natural time to reflect on life goals, your career and the coming year. Allow me to propose the following questions, which might help in your discovery.

1. Are you happy doing what you do for a living? Are you happy doing it where you do it? When you do it? How you do it?
2. To what degree is your current assignment/job/project/enterprise a fit with the real you? In other words, to what degree, if any, are you putting on a mask when you go to work? (Hint: The more you change yourself to fit into your job, the less you sleep at night.)
3. To what degree is your current assignment/job/project in line with your long-term plans? Do you have a vision of how the rest of your career is going to unfold?
4. Is there a chance you could get laid-off this year? Are you considering making a move or change? Do you have a goal to get promoted this year? Do you have a plan? Are you ready?
5. Do you have the knowledge and skills to fully utilize the new online world of erecruitment and job search, elearning and networking? Are you?
6. Have you thought about whether opportunities exist for you not in changing what you do, but how you do it? We often get stuck in the old way of thinking where making a living means having one job for one employer at one external place of work. If you could design a different way, would you?
7. The Big Question: Imagine yourself in your ideal (but realistic) professional situation 5/10 years from now. How happy are you? Now, what is standing between you and this vision? Is it a pipe dream or something you seriously WANT? What resources, skills, knowledge, or relationships do you lack to achieve this vision?

There is a lot here and if you found some of these relevant, but didn’t dig into them, don’t worry. I encourage you to stay tuned via the RSS feed or mailing list. 

Update on Wednesday, January 5, 2011 at 6:21PM by Ian

Frankly, I think everyone should take at least a few minutes at the beginning of every New Year to do a gut and head check on the state of your professional life. Think of it as the regular, scheduled car maintenance that you know you need to do. 

Way back in 2004, I posted 7 questions that you might ask yourself at the New Year. 

Job Search Strategy 3/6: Getting Called

3. Getting Called
If I could rank the pleasantness of the 6 job search strategies, this would rank right up there. Getting called means being sought out by a potential employer directly or via a recruiter. A very nice feeling and it gives you more control in the process. Here are three basic situations:

You’re Famous
Okay, famous may be a strong word, but let’s say that you have significant profile in your industry, market, or profession. You are a sought after property. Self-explanatory. And, something to shoot for.

Visible
A couple notches below famous is visible. You are visible when the people who might matter to you and your career, inside and outside your company, hear about you or can find / identify you easily should they need to.

Being visible also includes receiving recommendations from people who might know you or have heard of you. The person doing the recruiting does “sourcing” and receives names of people who might be qualified to do a job.

Cold-Called
The least personal way of receiving the call is via a point of data relevant to the hiring manager / recruiter. You may receive a call because you hold a certain job that is relevant to them. (You are the sales manager for a specific territory and they are hiring a sales manager in the same territory). Your name might be in a directory, for example, or someone knows your name, but nothing about you other than that you hold a job similar to the one being recruited.

Now, the thing about this category is that in the short-term, you can’t create fame or industry visibility for yourself. Over time, of course you can (as long as you are great at what you do and are adept at marketing yourself). But, if you haven’t put the building blocks in place over the last years, this isn’t something you can just rely on.

This job search strategy is an attraction strategy. Over time, you are creating pathways for people to find you.

The lesson: This kind of talent/job matching happens ALL OF THE TIME. You can play this game if you invest and play for the long term. In relationships. In your profile. In learning to play the game. Ultimately, this category of job search strategy should be your principle means of finding new opportunities down the road.

Job Search Strategy 1/6: Getting Moved Internally

Getting Moved Internally…you can help make several cool things happen within your existing employer.

The obvious one is to get promoted. While this has become harder and harder, if you know the ladder you are climbing is the right one for you, working towards this can be a good thing. One should never hang the whole success of their career on the potential of promotion internally, but it is the classic way of moving ahead.

The other way to go is lateral…into a new job, assignment, or project. This strategy can open up new opportunities, put you in front of new people, challenge and stretch you. In today’s project economy, this is a solid way to keep variety and growth in your portfolio of work without waiting for the elusive promotion.

The third, and less obvious internal strategy is to redefine your existing job. It isn’t always possible, but with reorganizations and the changing demands of the market, often, without changing your job title, you can finesse a change in responsibilities, focus or accountabilities. Perhaps you can offload things that you hate to do or that you aren’t good at. Often, job dissatisfaction comes from a person to job mismatch. If you have the opportunity to fit the job to you, seriously think about it as a way of getting

Many people automatically look outside their current employer for a solution to their career problems. Often, the most obvious solution is internal. This is doubly valid when there is soft hiring market.

Think carefully about your options.