Identify viable career options
First, you need to develop a list of viable career options, keeping in mind your skills and interests, career value and rewards and your own aspirations. If you haven’t given your career any thought yet, now would be a good time to start. Make use of your internet plans or any service provider you have, to do some research. Find out more about interesting conventional or emerging fields you would like. Having a list of career options that you can possibly involve yourself in is the first step to an effective career plan.
Prioritize career options
The second step is to prioritize viable career options. You can do this by valuing each option based on your own interests, your strongest skills, and your long-term goals. By assigning weights to each option, you can judge which ones are the most attractive options in your case. This helps you eliminate options that are not too appealing at the second glance.
Compare the top options
Once you have prioritized your options, take your top three or four strongest options and compare them against each other. If possible, do a SWOT analysis, mapping strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in each option. By objectively comparing these options based on your skills and aspirations, you can further narrow down your career plan.
Choose the most appropriate career option
Once you have narrowed down your career options, its time to make a choice. You need to choose the option that matches best with your skills, interests, aspirations and reward expectations. Analyze the options you compared to find the one that is the strongest in these terms. Stick with this final option.
Set “SMART” goals
Once you have chosen the most appropriate career path, the next step is to do some goal setting. Goals help you measure progress and track your career growth. The rule of thumb is to have specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timely goals or SMART goals. Your goals need to be simple, significant, quantifiable, realistic and appropriately timed to help you stay on track.
Make an action plan for your career
It all comes down to having well thought out plans. Therefore, just as you have Cox Internet plans, you must have a detailed career action plan. Lay out a roadmap of what you hope to achieve within a specific timeframe. This is important in the long term to judge if your career direction is according to expectations. Your career action plan is the tool that will help you achieve your SMART goals and your long-term aspirations.
