Welcome to the new year! As we emerge from the chaos of last year, it’s a good time to reflect and consider your career strategy. Are you bored or energized about your work? Do you feel fulfilled and appreciated? How can you integrate work and life to achieve and maintain wellbeing? All of that can be reflected in your 2021 career strategy.
1. Write your mission statement
A professional mission statement defines who you are, your values, and how you define success in your career. It can provide the map or guardrails for how to decide what job to take, how to spend your time, and with whom to interact. Some examples are:
- To improve the quality of life for oncology patients.
- To promote health equity through research and communication.
Here are lots more examples of mission statements, both personal and professional.
2. Identify your goals
Career goals are what you want to accomplish, and they should be aligned with your mission statement. They might be related to productivity, efficiency, growth, or professional and personal development. Your goals don’t need to center around your current position.
They can be short-, medium-, or long-term goals. Construct your goals as SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) goals. Some examples are:
- Develop subject matter expertise in US regulatory policy for generic drugs by attending a relevant course and relevant webinars in 2021.
- Explore and identify one rotation opportunity in pharmaceutical marketing for the second half of 2020.
If longer-term goals seem big and daunting, they can be broken down into weekly or monthly bitesize chunks. For example, if your overall goal is to broaden your professional network, an easily achievable goal might be to request one informational interview per month (using our email templates).
3. Create or update your personal and professional “board of directors”
A board of directors is a group of people who jointly supervise an organization’s activities. Your personal and professional “board of directors” is a trusted group of family, friends, and mentors who help guide your career path. They serve as your sounding board when you have career decisions or ideas to explore.
In creating or updating this board, consider the members’ variety of viewpoints and their ability to provide useful feedback. You might want to include a mix of ages and places in life as well as diverse past experiences.
Once you’ve identified your list of board members, make a plan to make contact and reconnect with them throughout the year. Even if you don’t have an important imminent career decision to make, sharing an update on current work or what’s motivating you can be appreciated.
4. Get organized
A new year might mean you’ve started using a new planner. Or maybe a new way to take notes during meetings (I’m going completely digital and tossing the paper pads!).
This might be the time to dig out your resume and make updates. Think back to the roles you held and the skills you developed.
Looking ahead, make a plan for how to organize all the evidence of your achievements in 2021. Start a list of your projects or portfolio of work. Include your responsibilities and activities, even if they are not formal projects. Determine how to tag or file documents and emails, such as letters of recommendation or testimonials of your work. Also, throughout the year, make a list of coworkers and stakeholders who can vouch for your impact.
This organizing will make preparing for your end-of-year or annual performance review really easy because all the evidence of your excellent work will be at your fingertips.
5. Plan your communication strategy
Very often, achieving your goals doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Communicate your goals and priorities early and often to the people who matter.
Are you looking to get promoted? Are you looking for leadership opportunities? The people who can help make those things happen need to know that those are your goals. Therefore, identify the decision makers who are critical to reaching your goals.
After figuring out to whom you need to communicate your goals, then devise your strategy for what to communicate. Some people might be ready and willing to help when you express to them, “Here’s what I would like to do … how can I get there?” Others might need more incentive, so you may need to describe what you’re aiming to do as a benefit to them and/or the company. One approach is to tie your priorities to corporate priorities and show how they align.
Note: Check out our post on finding a career mentor or advocate.
6. Assess your time use and carve out dedicated white space
In Laura Vanderkam’s book 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think, she asked really successful people to track their time use. She finds that the process of examining how we use the 168 hours we all have in a week (24 hours x 7 days) helps us dedicate more time to the things we want to do and have the most impact. Optimizing your time use with some reorganization and prioritizing can mean focusing time on doing high impact work or spending quality time with your family.
Tracking and assessing your time use could be as simple as being aware of how much time you spend in meetings where you have little interest or input. Could you discuss with your manager how you might be more productive spending that time on some other task? Are you mindlessly scrolling social media (I’m definitely guilty of this!) between appointments? Maybe that time can be used to go for a quick walk around the block to help reach your daily step count goal.
I also advocate for carving out some dedicated quiet time to just think. Maybe you can only find 10 minutes each day or 30 minutes each week. Make it a habit to be in that white space, shut out the daily stresses, to reflect on what motivates you. Think about what you have achieved. Or hope to achieve. The hurdles that you have overcome that you didn’t think were possible. Use the time to brainstorm. Ideas might come more easily when you’re unencumbered.
7. Take advantage of all your employee benefits
Lastly, you might find that going through all these steps has prompted you to consider a new job or look elsewhere for a new challenge. Before going, don’t leave anything on the table.
Make sure to explore every career development perk that is available to employees at your company. This might include internal rotations and secondments. Perhaps, there are webinars and courses available (or tuition reimbursement). If offered, use career coaching or career counselors to help you update your resume and practice interviewing.
And if you end up making a move, know the requirements for and when performance-based bonuses are paid out. Other benefits to consider are the retirement 401K or pension matches as well as long-term incentives, including the vesting schedules. Lastly, understand any repayment requirements for sign-on bonuses and relocation assistance.
Note: Check out our post on how to financially assess your new job offer.
Final note about the career strategy checklist
For our readers who subscribe to our quarterly newsletter, this 2021 career strategy checklist might be reminiscent of the end-of-year career checklist that we shared. I wanted to reiterate some of the same suggestions in the new year. Personally, I found it challenging to find quiet time away from my rambunctious toddler. When I did, my priority was to go to bed, not work on my career strategy to-do list.
We wish you much career success in 2021!