Top Tips for Long-Term Career Planning

To achieve the success that you want within your career, you need a vision. You are going to struggle to achieve your career goals and ambitions if you do not have this vision in place. A clear career plan for your long-term efforts and goals will help you realize your potential, but what steps do you need to take now?

Invest in Your Education

To achieve the career plans you set out, you will first need to invest in yourself and your education. Returning to college or furthering your current studies can help you open up a whole new window of possibilities – check out campusreel.org to compare entrance requirements for colleges, as well as success rates and scores. When you invest in your education moving forwards, you future-proof yourself and your career.

Set Career Goals

Goals can help you stay motivated and focused, and having at least several goals in mind in relation to your career is advised. When it comes to setting career goals, try and have a couple for the short term as well as a couple for the long term. For example, in the next two years do you want to take on more responsibilities, and in the longer-term (such as 5 years) do you want to be in a leadership role?

Create a Career Timeline

To achieve your career goals in the long term, you will benefit from having a career timeline to follow. This timeline is going to lay out where you want to be in the next few years, and how you will get there. A career timeline can make everything become a little bit more realistic and achievable. Seeing your goals and ambitions for the years ahead can help keep you on the path you need to follow.

Get a Mentor

As you are planning out your career and you are pushing for more, it is important to have guidance. You can get this guidance and this advice from having a mentor on your side. A mentor is going to be able to share their experience with you and impart their knowledge and wisdom. This is going to save you a lot of time and stress as you are not going to make the same mistakes or errors of judgment that they did. Finding a mentor that can grow with you is important and can be achieved by reaching out to the university or college you have studied with or the employer you are working with.

Build On Your Current Skills

To move forwards with your career in the future, you are going to need to use the current skills that you have. You must build on and improve those skills too. Recognizing where your strengths and weaknesses lie is important, but so too is learning to develop your talent, knowledge and awareness. To successfully build on your current skills, you need to look at where gaps and opportunities for development exist. For instance, are you awesome at communication, or is this something that needs to be worked on? Do you need to develop your analytical skills, or perhaps enhance other soft skills?