Are you looking for a specific position, promotion or to be the keynote speaker at the trade association's annual seminar, and are you having a bit of a hard time figuring out what you need to do to get there? Here you get a clear three-point plan that helps you get closer to your career goals.
Dorie Clark, compares your career plan with the campaigns the presidential candidates are setting up for the election campaign. In the sense that making your career dream come true requires that you approach planning in the same strategic way.
Clark's advice can be boiled down to these three:
You have to know where you want to go before you can make a plan. A clear goal is absolutely indispensable in terms of making a successful career plan. Identify how you will get there, who can help you further and what skills you need to develop in order to fulfill the role. You also need to identify when you want to achieve your goal, so you can work your way backwards through the actions needed to achieve your goal.
Create a career plan and insert when you will achieve your goal. You can find one template for your career plan here.
Set important milestones
To find out which milestones are important, you can e.g. ask people in similar positions what things the job requires. What do you need to be able to apply for this particular post - training, networking, personally etc.? Then make a plan for how you can get these skills and incorporate them into your career plan.
To reach your career goal, you need to identify who can help you move towards your goal. Not only the people who have direct decision-making power, e.g. your (future) boss, but also the indirect power holders (the boss's wife, colleagues, the board, the employment committee etc.). It's about your name appearing in as many places as possible in the decision-makers' everyday lives - so that you become the obvious choice when the promotion becomes relevant.
Create an overview by inserting the most important contacts into a "power map" (See text box below).
How to make a power map
To create a power map, outline the relationship between the people who can influence your career and which people influence them.
Color code:
- Green: Close connection to you.
- Yellow: Loose connection to you.
- Red: No connection to you.
Take as a starting point who you need to convince to get your desired position. Eg. the company's five top managers Hanne, Emma, Dennis, Michael and Susanne.
Identify one by one who can influence your five bosses.
You now know who has an influence on you reaching your career goal. Now it's about getting to know as many of them as possible (preferably all of them). Ask yourself what you can offer these important people. Whether it's knowledge, a certain quality or help with a project that has value for them!
Arrange short coffee meetings and find out what you can or do, which is 15 min. worth their time. How can you help? Another way to get under the person's radar is to find out if she is on social media (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, a blog or something else). Consider whether to start following, commenting or “liking” her (or the company's) messages. You can also ask interesting questions. Maybe the person has a favorite blog where you can write a guest post or join the discussions.
Clark recommends that you insert all of these elements into your own personal career campaign plan. Also insert dates for achieving your final goal, sub-goals, important conferences, social events you have to attend, when you want to arrange meetings with influential people, etc.
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