Hi! I'm Jen. Welcome back! What are your career goals? Do you want to make more
money? Or maybe you want to get a promotion or find a less stressful job?
Whatever your goals are, or if you're not sure what they should be, in this video
I'll teach you how to make smart, achievable goals so you can succeed in
2019. If you want more career advice, I post new videos weekly to this channel.
So subscribe and turn on notifications so you're the first to know. Let's look
at some smart career goals that I think would benefit anyone to set right now.
First, think about what are your three to five-year goals? In three to five years
do you want to be in the same position? If you do, that might involve developing
your technical skills and progressing down a technical path. If you want a
promotion, think about, "Okay, I want to be in a higher level position." If you want
to make more money, if you want to have a less stressful job - think about those
longer-term goals. And even if you don't set a SMART goal around it, that doesn't
mean we can't set some targets to happen for the next year. With those three to
five-year goals in mind, let's look at four different specific goals that I
think are very applicable for any career today.
The first goal - build technology skills. No matter what job you're in, whether
you're an analyst, a manager, technology skills are definitely going to just
continue to become more in demand. So whether this is learning programming or
learning a software or just becoming more familiar with general technology
that's available, set some sort of career goal around this. And again, tailor it to
your area of expertise. If you're an analyst,
maybe it's learning a new programming language. Even if you're a manager, it could
be learning a little bit of programming. It could just be learning about how some
of these different programs work. Or learning how to use technology to look
at good metrics and to get your metrics to tell you something. Even if you're in
an administrative role, getting to know these different technologies, getting to know
different software, that can really help you progress in your career. Because
let's face it - everything is just getting more technologically based and those are
in-demand skills that anybody can benefit from building this year.
Alright, my second, and this is, I would say, a timeless career goal and it's one I've
certainly focused on in my career and even today - build communication skills.
You can be amazing at your job. You can be amazing technically. And if you can't
communicate, you're going to have a lot of trouble growing in your career, at least
at any sort of quick pace. We need to be able to communicate with each other
and the nice bonus with this skill is that it's going to benefit you in every
area of your life. If you can communicate better at work, then you can
communicate better with your spouse, with your friends, with your kids, with your
family. Communication skills are something we constantly need to work on.
This is: how do you interact with people? How do you engage them? How do you make
people feel heard and listened to? How do you frame how you talk to people in a
way that is going to make them more receptive to what you say and to
understand you better when you're talking about different things? Work
on those communication skills. I don't think there's ever a person that has
advanced too far in their communication skills that they can't benefit from this.
And if you think you're that person, try to get a little honest feedback from
those around you because I would be really shocked if that's the case. My
third skill that could be a perfect career goal for anyone is build your
network. A lot of people think about their network when they need it and they
don't think about it if they don't need to rely on it. People will think about
their network when it's time to get a new job and they want someone to act as
a reference or to help them find a role or get them a foot in the door, but the
time to build your network isn't when you need to rely on it. It's all of the
other time when you don't have a need to pull from that network. If you're
cultivating that network and giving into that network, benefiting people
around you, then they're going to be a lot more receptive when you need help
from them in your career search or in developing your career. Work on
building your network all the time. This could be as small as spending a few
more minutes once a week talking to someone else in another department that
you don't normally interact with. Or this could be getting more involved in
LinkedIn or local networking meetings or some other online forum. Building up that
network is going to be really valuable and that'll serve you throughout your
career. It's also a great way to find out about job openings. Even sometimes if
you're not looking, you can find out about things that are out there. So
definitely build that network whenever you have the opportunity. My fourth goal
that I think anyone can accomplish this year and will add value to them is: get a
certification. This could be in an area related to one of the other three things
I just talked about. This could be some sort of programming certification or
certification related to a specific software or it could be management
training. Certifications are good to have on your resume. I don't think that the
certifications always make a difference in whether someone is better at the job
than someone else, but the reality is that when you're putting your resume out
there to apply for jobs, that the certification makes a difference. It
looks good on your resume and adds value. And hopefully when you're doing it,
you're getting value out of it too. I don't think that you should just do it
for your resume. I think it's going to help you in other areas, but definitely
take time to do it build your resume when you're not applying for jobs. You
can do...you can get certifications while you're in the middle of applying for
a new role. There's nothing stopping you from that. But sort of like with the
networking, the best time to do it is when you don't really need it or where
it's not an immediate pressing thing that you want to utilize. It's constantly
cultivating that so it's there when you need it. Those are my four areas of
goals that I think are critical for the next year that can benefit anyone's
career. I didn't put any of those in smart terms so put those in that
Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound terms. Pick one of those
or pick something else. I'm curious what kind of goals you decide to set for the
next year or the next three years or the next month or week. Let me know in the
comments. I'd really like to hear what you're working on to build your career
and hear more about your career goals. Is your goal for this year to get a new job?
Is your resume saying everything that you want it to say? If you're not sure if
your resume is the perfect resume to land you a new job this year, check out links
below. I'll help you get it tailored so that it really sets you apart from other
candidates. And if you feel like your resume is okay, but you want other tips, I
put together my five top keys to landing a new job. It'll give you everything you
need to know to make sure your job search is a huge success. Thanks so much
for watching!