Is your career part of your 2017 goals? It definitely should be! We are going to walk through a series of questions to help you figure out your career goals for 2017. 

Our goal here is to learn, grow and thrive in our careers. 

Happy New Year!!!! It is the time of the year where everyone starts to look at how last year went and what we want to accomplish next year. 

I am a MAJOR nerd, I love setting goals, I love making lists, accomplishing my goals and checking things off my list. One person I look to for goal setting advice is Chalene Johnson, check her out on social! 

When we look at our 2017 goals we need to make sure our careers and jobs are part of those goals. Our career is something we want to make sure we are evaluating each year, I would even encourage you to do this monthly or at a minimum quarterly. 

Get out a piece of paper and pen because I want you to make sure your goals are written down on paper. They need to be specific. A lot of people follow the SMART goals process: 

S - Specific

M - Measurable 

A - Attainable 

R - Realistic 

T - Timeline  

We are going to cover 3 sets of questions, how to evaluate your career, evaluating your current job and questions that will help you set your 2017 career goals. 

Evaluating your current career: 

1) Think about how your career went in 2017, write down some thoughts 

Think about what went well 

Think about what did not go well

Think about some of your biggest accomplishments

Think about some of your biggest areas of opportunity 

Journal that out for a few minutes  

2) Are you where you want to be in your career? 

When you look at your ultimate goal, where you are looking to be in your career, are you where you want to be? 

If the answer is no, what are you going to do to change that? 

If the answer is yes, how are you going to grow? 

Evaluating your current job:

1) Do you enjoy what you do on a day to day basis?

When you list out your typical day, week or month, do you enjoy those tasks? 

Why or why? 

This is everything, this will help you determine if you need to make a change and if so, what change you need to make

2) Do you enjoy the type of work you do or the type of projects you work on? 

Why or why not?

3) How do you feel on Monday mornings or Sunday nights? 

Ask yourself why you are feeling this way?  

Questions that will help you set your 2017 career goals:

1) What is your specific career goal you are going to accomplish in 2017?

Be specific

Specific enough if I asked you how you would know if you accomplished your goals, you would know the answer. 

What projects do you want to be involved in?

What momentum do you want to get?

What skills do you want to learn in 2017? 

I hope you take the time to write out the information we covered today! 

If you want to dig in deeper, check out these episodes: 

#3 - How Do You Feel On Sunday Nights?

#5 - Dating Story Turned Career Coaching

#20 - Evaluating Your Career