By Tracy Leung – Manager, Sales & Marketing Recruitment, Links International Hong Kong
Have you achieved your career goals for this year? Do you know where your career might lead you next year? I personally like December a lot. It’s a month of celebrations, not only for Christmas, but also for what you have achieved throughout the year. These achievements will also indicate what has worked this year, and what you could do better next year. At this time of year, when things are a little quieter, it’s the perfect time to reflect upon the past 12 months and set yourself new targets for the coming year.
Before you start setting goals, it might be a good idea to get a benchmark for what level of salary your peers are getting and see how much you should be earning in 2017. Download Links International’s 2017 Asia Salary Snapshot now!
What’s the best way to set goals for your career? Here are my personal tips to get you started:
1. Stay positive about your career, or find another opportunity that can help you reach your career goals
First of all, it’s important to love your job and love what you do. If you’ve felt a little unenthusiastic at work recently, try to fall in love with your job again by taking a new perspective in the coming year. If you want to look for new opportunities, start now and update your resume. Allow three months for your job search. Even if it seems like there are no exciting job opportunities in the market, meet with your recruiter and discuss your expectations – this can help you to get prepared and explore other opportunities that you may not have thought about.
2. Strengthen your personal brand
Your personality also shapes your professionalism, especially with regards to how you handle situations that involve people and emotions where a lot of different soft skills are required. This also applies to company leaders and their management style, i.e. how you are influencing your team and motivating your team. So, spend some time to think about how to strengthen your own personal brand that you are selling when you apply for a job.
3. Break your career plan down into monthly and quarterly goals
Set achievable goals and break them down on a monthly and quarterly basis, so that you can review them from time to time and revise accordingly to improve your career plan. Although a year may seem short, it’s unlikely you’ll remember what you did last January, so it’s good to have structured ideas.
4. Don’t delay your goals and always measure your progress
You know that six-pack you were aiming for? Do you have a healthy diet and work out three times a day? Remember that Rome was not built in a day.
There is no point in setting goals unless you are 100% committed to them. One key thing to remember when you set your career goals is that your goals should be achievable and, more importantly, they should be goals that YOU yourself can achieve, meaning you should focus on the things that you can control.
That said, the year isn’t over yet, so you should be still getting people engaged in the business and working hard through to the end of the year, so that you don’t wake up with a gaping hole of a pipeline in January. Preparation and planning is key. I wish you a busy and fruitful 2017.
Links International specialises in recruiting top talent across Asia. For further career advice and to hear how we can help take your career to the next level, please do not hesitate to contact us.