We are two months from the end of the year - the perfect time to start thinking about your 2016 career plans!
Here are ten career moves to make now, before year-end fever and the holidays overtake us. Don't wait until New Year's Day to get your 2016 career plan moving!
Look Back at 2015
Pull out your 2015 planner or calendar app and look back at the year that's about to end. What were your biggest projects, your biggest triumphs and the big events of 2015?
Take the time to remember the people, places and projects that taught you the most and grew your professional muscles over the past ten months.
Go back through your year, month by month, and remind yourself of the great things you completed this year -- as well as the goals you set or thought about for 2015 that didn't come to fruition.
If those goals are still important to you, how will you make them real in 2016?
Create Your Mojo File
Start a Mojo File to keep track of your greatest accomplishments at work. In your Mojo File, which can consist of hard copies, electronic files or a combination, you'll store reminders of your most important wins on the job or in your professional life.
Your Mojo File can include letters of praise from customers, brochures or newsletters you created, grateful messages from your boss and colleagues, and notes from your most significant projects.
Your Mojo File wil come in handy at performance review time when you're wracking your brain trying to remember the great things you made happen during the past year.
You can start your 2016 Mojo File early and populate your 2015 Mojo File before end-of-year madness overtakes you!
Capture Your Learning and "Aha!s"
As you think through 2015 and review your correspondence, project files and calendar, keep track of the big "Aha!s" or realizations that hit you during the year.
Maybe you learned how to create Crystal reports in 2015, or learned enough about Facebook to get your company its first 20K Likes. Maybe you realized in 2015 that you don't like accounting and you want to try something new.
You can get a simple journal or notebook and start writing in it every day or every few days. Journaling is a fantastic way to capture your shifts in thinking as they occur. It's a mojo-boosting activity, too!
Choose a 2016 Career Plan: A, B or C
Don't have a 2016 career plan? That's no problem! There are only three choices. Career Plan A is to stick around in your current job and grow new muscles in 2016.
That doesn't mean going to sleep on your career and dragging yourself into work every day. It doesn't mean hitting the goals your boss assigns to you and forgetting about your own goals.
If you decide to keep your current job and grow new muscles, you have to know which muscles you're planning to grow, and how you plan to make them bigger!
Maybe you want to learn html this year, or move from inside to outside sales. This is a great plan to choose if you can clearly see the learning still available to you at your current job -- and if your job still deserves you!
Career Plan B is to get a new job. This is the obvious choice if you're job-hunting now! Career Plan C is to build your Two-Lane Highway.
That's the right plan for you if you want to keep your current job but launch a stealth job search on the side -- or plan the launch of a consulting business while you're still working at your present job.
Set your Number One 2016 Career Goal
Decide on your Number One career goal for 2016. Is it to rebrand yourself out of sales operations and into marketing, and get a new job in that area?
Is it to get promoted at your current job, or move into a different department? Write your goal in your journal and think about the steps you'll need to take to get there.
There may be sales and marketing involved (selling yourself and/or your ideas) and there will undoubtedly be some self-reflection required, too!
Build Your Action Plan
Next, get specific. If you're job-hunting, don't lob one more resume into an automated recruiting portal, hoping against hope that this time you'll hear a kind word back.
Pull back the truck and make an action plan for your career in 2016, whether you're job-hunting, launching or growing a consulting business or growing new muscles in your current job.
The more ambitious the undertaking, the greater the need for a thoughtful, concrete plan!
Get it In Your Calendar
Buy a 2016 calendar or use a calendar app to put date-specific stakes in the ground around your 2016 plans. Make plans for your 2016 vacation -- there will never be a better time to plan the year around your needs, rather than your employer's ever-changing priorities!
Update Your Human-Voiced Resume
Pull up your Human-Voiced Resume and update it with your greatest 2015 Dragon-Slaying Stories. While your triumphant memories are still fresh in your mind, get them down on paper (or electrons)!
Update your LinkedIn Profile
Now that your resume is looking sharp, get your LinkedIn profile up to date, too! If you're like most people, you'll be surprised how much has changed in your professional life since you last looked at your profile.
Add images, presentations, videos, podcasts or any other kind of media record you've got to your profile to round out your professional persona.
Catch up with Your Network
Lastly, write (individual) email messages or send texts to the ten to 12 people you'd most like to catch up with before the new year arrives.
Set up lunches, coffee dates or other one-on-one (or small-group) get-togethers with your homies between now and the end of December. A year goes fast -- and they seem to get faster every year!
Jump on these ten career boosters now and sail into 2015 with altitude!
