Recruitment: Barry Whelan gives tips

BARRY WHELAN

managing director of Excel Recruitment

www.excelrecruitment.com

Achieving your career goals

Excel Recruitment’s Barry Whelan shares seven top tips on how to reach your full potential within the workplace

Last month’s article discussed the advantages of having career goals and how, by having such goals, they can really help keep your career on track. This month, I have continued this theme by looking at how to achieve career goals.

how best to achieve career goals

1. Write down your career goals

Like any goal, writing it down may seem like an old-school technique, but it is actually incredibly effective. Based on several studies, individuals who write down goals, including their career goals, see a higher likelihood of achieving them compared to those who don’t. There are several benefits to writing down our goals. The most obvious being, that by writing down a goal, the individual is forced to think critically on how to achieve each goal.

2. Share your plan of how to achieve your career goals

This is critical and another massive perk of writing down career goals. It makes it easy to share them with friends, colleagues, mentors and managers. When an individual discloses their short and long-term career goals to other people, they feel more challenged and under pressure to follow them through.

3. Visualisation of the outcome

A common thread around achievement of goals is the ability to visualise them. If you take a great example of a contemporary self-help book like ‘The Secret’, the book’s central theme is that if you wish for something, visualise it, and it will come through. High achievers visualise their success. For example, sports psychologists often ask their top athletes to envision themselves crossing that finish line or scoring a goal. It is the same concept with career goals. One should think about all the steps they need to reach their goal and plan for the setbacks that they may encounter.

4. Review annually

It is good practice to annually appraise your career goals to make sure you are heading in the right direction for their achievement. It is all about small steps and not moving mountains. An annual review really helps keep your goals on track.

5. Find a great mentor

Whether you are planning to move up or transition into a whole new career, an experienced mentor in that industry can provide invaluable insight. Why not spend some time on LinkedIn finding a great mentor? Alternatively, reach out to peers in the industry to find someone with at least ten more years of experience that you can discuss career goals with and brainstorm action-items together. You will be surprised how much people will be willing to help!

6. Get feedback on your

Curriculum Vitae

Having found that really strong mentor or two, reach out to them to share your current CV and ask them these three questions: • Where am I lacking in skill or knowledge? • If you were recruiting, what red flags would you see in my CV, my work history, skills or education, that might cause you to be concerned or reject me as a candidate? • What areas of my skills and experience most stand out to you as my strengths?

7. Break big goals into small pieces

Depending on your career goals, some could take months or years to achieve, which could stall motivation. You never eat an elephant in one bite! Break down bigger goals into smaller pieces. Your plan of attack is to start with the end goal in mind and then determine what daily or weekly actions will move you closer to achieving your goal. Essentially, a career goal is all about setting short-term and long-term objectives relating to your career path. Setting career goals is important. It will help propel individuals to keep your goals on track and hopefully accomplish them. However, goals are so much more powerful when they are crystalised through writing them down, annualising and sharing them with others. ■

A fresh design for Ireland’s most widely read newspaper

Thought-provoking writing and essential reading in every section