7 Steps to Planning a Successful Career
2 August 2008
Topics: career advancement, professional development, engineering
A successful and satisfying career starts with a plan. This video lays out 7 steps to accelerate your professional development.
Script
If you are a recently graduated engineer or technical professional entering the workforce, you might feel some anxiety. Uncertainty might shadow your thoughts concerning what the future will bring? Where are you going in your career? How can you get ahead?
Such unease might indicate that you need to take your bearings. You may need to assess where you’ve come and where we’re going.
A successful and satisfying career starts with a plan. Just like visiting an unfamiliar city without a map or directions, trying to advance your career without a roadmap can take you randomly into sometimes unproductive directions. In addition, without a blueprint you will not know where you are or understand when you reach your destination.
I have found the following sevens steps useful in my own career development.
1. Determine what you want and evaluate what you will trade for what you want.
Do you aspire to occupy the executive suite on the top floor at the corporate headquarters? Or will you content yourself working from a cubicle or the plant production floor?
Do you want to travel, or not?
Will you work in your home country, or labor overseas?
Will you work in sales, operations, or technology?
What time will you allocate for exercise, recreation, and other people? Will you go life alone, seek a lasting relationship, or enjoy marriage and a family?
So, what are your preferences? Where have you placed your hopes?
2. Determine your possibilities.
Where do your dreams overlap the realities of your circumstances? Where can you match your desires to marketplace needs?
3. Set goals.
Write them down. Include milestones. Where will you be in 1 year, 2, 5, 10, 20 years?
4. Determine the overall path to your goals.
What skills will you need? What experience must you gain?
5. Identify the near-term steps to follow your route.
Can you avail yourself of training to accelerate your progress?
6. Start.
Yes, get going. Do something as soon as possible.
7. As you began to move ahead, periodically check where you are.
Cast your eyes back to see from where you’ve come, and raise your eyes ahead to see where you yet must tread. I find that annual and weekly progress reviews and goal setting best meet my needs.
My large goals generally stretch over ½ year to 2 years. I use both year-end and strategic point evaluations to measure my long-term accomplishments.
On the short-term, I find a weekly calendar an ideal planning window. I set 2 or 3 high priority goals for each week. These goals contribute to my overall larger goals. Each Sunday I examine my progress from the prior week, and I establish new goals for the coming week. My work on my smaller goals moves me forward towards larger accomplishments, and I begin to feel a rhythm of accountability and progress.
Conclusion
In conclusion, if you want to replace anxiety with hope and let you dreams supplant indecision, then set goals and begin working towards them. As you control your career, you will achieve greater productivity, contribute more to your organization and to society, and you will gain personal satisfaction.