“Career Planning is like a parachute… you need to pack it before you need it.” 

What with the recent events in America shaking global financial institutions to the core, now is a good time to pause, reflect and then plan and act for the future.  When the economy and job markets are booming it’s easy to get complacent, it’s when things change unexpectedly that you’ll wish you had the foresight to invest in a little planning.  

Career Planning is the process of aligning your strengths, interests and needs with skills development opportunities so that you can continue to grow and develop (and remain employable).  It’s like a parachute in that the best time to tend to it, is before you actually need it.  It takes time and effort to work out where you want your career to head, and often even more time to actually go out there and make it happen. 

‘Making it happen’ could mean anything from attending a course to establishing and/or developing your professional network to increase your profile.  Because these things take time you don’t want to leave it till the last minute.  Have you noticed just how quickly circumstances can change? 

Although our unemployment levels are still solid, there have recently been more and more reports of mass layoffs and redundancies both here in Australia and overseas.  The financial crisis has been catastrophic for those staff at the banks and investment houses that went under!  Now it’s debatable whether a good career plan would have saved those employees but it’s certain that those employees with good marketable skills, who have been thinking about and preparing for the future will be in a more competitive position when seeking their next job.  

We’ve just updated our Self Paced Career Planning Kit too – you can view it online here.  

When working with our clients I’m routinely reminded of the benefit of sound planning and some forward thinking… and not just for career.  Many clients when contemplating the ‘bigger picture’ really struggle to articulate what it is that they want out of life.  Can you imagine how much more difficult it is to take the right sort of action (or even to get motivated to take any action) when you’re not really sure where it is that you’re going?  It’d be like trying to plan a holiday to no-where.  What to pack, when to go, how to get there and what’s going to happen when you arrive… is impossible to determine without knowing the destination.  Same goes with your life. 

So its million dollar question time… are you ready? 

“Do you know what your future looks like?” 

Do you have a clear idea or is it vague, ambiguous and fuzzy?  If it’s the latter you really will benefit from sitting down and setting yourself some goals.  Try it, its fun.  

You could start by writing down 15 or 20 goals and grouping them by timeframe.   You could try setting some 3 month, 1 year, 3 year and 10 year goals.  Keep in mind that everything starts with a thought. 

Recent research by the Dominican University of California  has shown that those people who write their goals and action commitments down, and provide weekly progress reports to a friend achieved 76% of their goals.   If you need a hand let me know, we have some free resources for goal setting that we’ll happily share. 

Let me know your thoughts… you can post your comments or your goals here if you like. 

Warm Regards

Sean