by David B Hitchcock

Created on: June 04, 2010   Last Updated: June 07, 2010

How to stay focused on your career objectives

You are busy meeting deadlines every day, and doing your best not to fall behind schedule. You are running from meeting to meeting to conference call. In this rat race called work, you need to know how to stay focused on your career objectives.

What are your career objectives?

In some companies career objectives are part of annual reviews, and help both management and employees set goals for upcoming year. Other companies aren’t so organized, and leave these objectives up to the employees. If this applies to you, you need to sit down and figure out what your objectives are for your career. Do you want to specialize in your job? Do you want to simply earn more responsibility? Do you want to move into management? Or maybe you want to work towards being a vice president or maybe even the CEO! No matter what your goals are, you need to determine what you want, why you want it, and what it will take to get there. It’s well and fine to say you want to be CEO, but that is a long term plan and will involve a number of shorter term goals to get there.

Evaluate your goals and your current job

Once you have your goals, you can come up with ideas on how to move from your current job toward those goals. If you are a junior sales rep and your goal is to be the top selling sales rep, then you know you need to put in the extra time to learn how your company does things, learn about the products you are selling, and just put the time in talking to customers. That is a lot of work, and may cover a number of short term goals, but it’s all aimed at reaching that long term career goal.  Another example might be a software developer who wants to become a manager. That person would need to work on management skills and training, and likely become a team lead before getting a chance to be a manager.  You need to make a plan on your own before you talk to others.

Talk to your manager and HR

Once you have your plan, talk to your manager and HR. They will be able to help guide you towards possibilities you might not have been aware of. Maybe someone is leaving the company and it would be a great next step in your career. Or maybe there is a project coming up that you could head up and get recognition for. Maybe HR knows of extra money in the training budget you can use. All of this is great news, but if you come to the meeting excepting them to do all the work you may not find out about all these opportunities. Doing that initial legwork on your own shows initiative, and helps you know your goals better.

Follow through

Once you have set career objectives and short term goals, it’s much easier to focus on them during your day to day tasks. Without these sign posts along your way, you will get lost in the towering pile of paperwork you plough through each day.

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