Your career is so much more than just a job, it’s a key aspect of daily life. That’s why it is so essential that when it comes to your career, that you ensure you take a proactive approach.
If you want something different for yourself to what you already have, you need to be willing to get out there and make it happen.
The fact is that when it comes to achieving career success, there’s a lot more to consider than you might realize. However, one thing is for certain: if you sit back and let your success stagnate, you will never move things forward.
Did you set yourself the goal of making this your year? If the answer is yes, then you need to start thinking about the steps that you can take to turn your career goals into a reality.
When it comes to giving your career that much-needed boost, being proactive is crucial. It’s also vital that you understand what moves you need to make to propel your career forward and allow yourself to achieve your career goals.
You don’t want to wake up one day, twenty years down the line, in a career that you hate, simply because you never bothered to strive to meet your career goals, do you?
If you are going to spend a significant portion of your life working, you might as well do so in a role that you enjoy and are passionate about, right?
Bearing that in mind, below are a few handy hacks to help make achieving your career goals feel more achievable. For everything that you need to know, read on!
How to Crush Your Career Goals
1. Stop making excuses
The first step to achieving career success is to stop making excuses.
Don’t make the mistake of constantly coming up with reasons why you are yet to take the leap of faith and do more to support your career goals. Instead of thinking of reasons not to be brave and start moving towards the future you want, focus on the goals that you want to reach.
Sit down and write a list of your targets – think about where you want to be at the end of this year. By taking the time to plot out where you want to be, you will give yourself the best chance of achieving career success.
2. Decide what you want to do
While you might have an idea of what you want to do, if you are going to meet your career goals, you need to actually decide what you want to do.
You need to be clear about the career path that you want to take. Do you simply want to move into a different area of your industry or do you want to start a whole new career?
You need to be clear about what you want to achieve, as otherwise you will struggle to meet your targets and boost your career in the way that you have hoped to do.
3. Set goals
Once you know how you want to change your career, the next step is to start setting a number of goals.
For instance, say you want to retrain and move into a different career, you need to plot out what steps you are going to take to make doing so achievable.
Say, you want to become a nurse, you need to think about how you can break that goal down into smaller, more achievable steps, such as starting your training and undertaking work experience.
Setting huge, seemingly unachievable goals is not a mistake that you want to make – it’s far better to break them down into smaller, less overwhelming milestones to meet.
4. Get creative
When it comes to moving your career forward, it’s important to be aware that you may need to be a little creative with your approach.
Say, for instance, you want to move away from your current role in administration into a role as a teacher or teaching assistant.
To be able to move into these kinds of jobs, you would need to undertake specialist training, which can be tricky when you’re already working in a full-time role. However, by sourcing training courses that can be completed remotely, online, such as those offered by Edith Cowan University, you can make retraining far easier to do.
When it comes to boosting your career success, you may need to get a little creative with the approach that you take.
For instance, while you might not be able to train for a new role in a traditional way, such as taking an on-campus degree, you should be able to learn virtually instead. The internet has meant that the way we learn is changing.
5. Build your experience
It’s important that you take building up your experience seriously, particularly if you are planning on moving from one industry to an entirely different one.
Of course, that being said, building your experience may not seem all that doable, especially when you have a full-time job. However, there are plenty of ways that you can boost your experience within a certain sector, without having to take time off of work.
Let’s say, you are keen to become a teacher, you could opt to work as an online tutor during your free time. Or you could choose to work as a writer for your area of interest, either blogging or working as a content creator for the industry.
Look for opportunities that will allow you to complete them flexibly, so that your current role isn’t impacted.
Read also: How to Make $50,000 as a Blogger
6. Put an action plan in place
The most important step that you should take when it comes to ensuring that you achieve your career goals is putting an action plan in place.
Know what you want to achieve and lay out how you will actually make it happen. It won’t take long to create this kind of plan, and once you’ve got it in place, you will find that an action plan will keep you on track and help to hold you accountable.