Managing Your Career

You have to do this for yourself. The day of corporate loyalty to the individual has long disappeared.

To decide what you want, you have to start by understanding yourself. Then you have to select your job targets. This is just basic job hunt protocol.

Then one looks into the future. There are exercises to help you visualize and understand this dynamic. As you look into the future, you may really invent the perfect job for yourself.

When you know the ideal job, then you visualize the ideal work environment. Life needs to be balanced, so you want to decide what you want most in your career. This isn't the same for everybody.

A careful career development plan needs to be laid out. What do you want to do and when. Perhaps you desire to stay in your present situation, and then there are strategies for developing a plan with your present manager.

To develop yourself professionally, one needs to get feedback from others. Work relationships are crucial, and they must be understood. Careful attention needs to be paid to the characteristics of effective professional. If these characteristics aren't in place to your satisfaction, there must be effort put forth to enhance desirable skills. Get an action plan in place.

The world is changing even as you read this. How well to you react to change? One must accept that change is inevitable, then anticipate change, and then prepare to meet future opportunities. Time needs to be devoted to researching the jobs of the future, and what changes may occur in politics, social change, and the economic marketplace. What key forces are impacting the global economy? Your career must be aligned with industry change.

How you can improve your position where you are and whether you need to be looking in a new direction must figure into the equation.

Get the help of a professional coach to explore how you can get the very most from your accomplishments. Learn how to make an effective career change, if that is necessary.

Craft the best possible resume, and have your professional pitch so polished that it accurately depicts who you are and all that you are about.

Learn what Networking is - and what it isn't. Become an ace. Networking is a lifetime commitment to genuine connection with other professionals. Be sure you are doing it in the most sophisticated manner possible. One can network oneself into almost anywhere. Learn how to follow-up after a networking meeting. Be the professional that you are in every way. It's especially important to follow-up even when there is no apparent or immediate job in sight.

Work with your coach to get basic interview techniques to a science, so that you interview naturally and effectively. Stay with your coach as you start out on the right foot in each new job. The first six weeks is a particularly vulnerable and important time in any new venture. Treat it with respect.

You will have more career moves than you can even imagine. Make sure that each step is the right one.

Would you like help getting started? Click here for an Executive Career Coach.