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Last two articles on career page are archived here.
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Career Planning
By: Jeff Rowe


What comes to your mind when you think about career planning? Many people aren't sure what career planning means. For our purposes we will define career planning as "A goal that you desire to achieve in a selected field or occupation with a well thought out plan to get you there."

Why decide on a career goal?

A career goal helps you focus and make decisions on what you want to do for a living. A career goal can be a specific job-such as a clerk or teacher-or a career goal can be a particular field you want to work in, such as transportation or education.

A career goal may help you discover your talent, skills and abilities and possibilities that you wouldn't have thought of. Many possibilities exist with any career you choose. Having a career goal can guide you to doing what you want to do in your life-rather than just aimlessly going from job to job.

The future is unpredictable; however, you should still make career goals and plan the necessary steps to your goal.

Expectations/Disappointments
With every goal there is an anticipated desired outcome. We call this an expectation. Our expectations help keep us motivated. When we realize our goal, we often feel joy and satisfaction.

Without expectation, life would be dull. Disappointments, if understood properly, can be our guide.

All of us have expectations and disappointments. In the process in thinking about our goals, we have to be prepared to have disappointments.

Career planning is simply goal planning with the intention of setting goals for jobs and career.

However, the only career planning you need is the one that is specific for your particular needs.

Career planning is gathering information, and based on that information, making a goal for you, and then planning the steps needed to obtain that goal.

WHY IS CAREER PLANNING IMPORTANT?
Let's suppose you choose a field. Career planning is not planning for that field on a one-time only basis, but it's a continuing process; in fact, you can call it a lifetime process. Career planning is not just making plans to obtain your "perfect" job or career, but to help you make the many adjustments there will be along the way as you learn about you and your world or work.

Career planning is estimating, predicting and calculating all the steps necessary to achieving your goals. The career planning process can be divided into six steps:

  1. Self-Assessment
  2. Career Exploration
  3. Targeting
  4. Career Preparation
  5. Marketing Yourself
  6. Career Management

Career planning is a process that is always ongoing and often runs in cycles. When you desire change in your career, the process can be repeated many times.

In planning your career, do all you can to find the right people who will be your mentors that can help you along the way. Your career can far exceed your expectations if you learn what your boss and the organization expects of you and you meet or exceed those expectations. Career planning is no different than any goal setting and planning. The difference is that you are specifically separating your career and job goals from all other goals you may have.

The reason most people do not turn their wishes and dreams into reality is because they don't take these wishes and dreams and make them goals. A goal is a dream with a deadline.

There are many reasons why people don't make goals for themselves. The biggest reason is they don't understand that the process of goal setting is a skill. All of us have made some goals in our life and achieved them. But most of these were not large or life changing goals like going into business, changing careers, becoming wealthy, writing a novel, going from office clerk to a top executive or becoming an expert in your field. Successful people set goals; they plan and follow the plan. Goal setting is a process and a learned skill. Simple, short-term goals may be done in your head, but more complex, long-term goals, should be written, evaluated and monitored often. The longer it takes to achieve your goal, the more you will encounter problems, changes and frustration.

Goal setting is as much art as it is science. The more you understand the process and the more skills you acquire, the better are the chances in reaching your goal. By seeking your goal you will help build your self-esteem and self-confidence.

Goal seeking is growth building. Goal planning is life planning. As you define your goal, it will define you.

Life presents us with unexpected events all the time. So when we set out a goal we must understand that there may be many roadblocks to reaching a goal.

Barriers that come up often cause a person to abandon a goal. Before you do anything further, ask yourself "Why do I want to achieve this goal?" You may say, "I want to achieve this goal because I want to have more status" or "I want to increase my salary" or "I believe I can be a good leader and this can help me achieve my long term goal of becoming a top executive in my present company or another company." This exercise will help you to clarify your intentions and goals. In summary, many people are dissatisfied in their jobs and career. Career planning will help maximize your potential and satisfaction in your work. Having a career plan keeps you focused and motivated. Career planning will give you confidence that you are in charge of your career and life and you have the power to decide, act, and do what you want to accomplish your goals.

Clever Ways to Get a Raise: Perks you Might Not Have Thought About

by Jack Chapman

 

"Lean and mean"... "Tight budget."

You hear those phrases a lot nowadays, and they discourage people from thinking there's any way to increase their income at work. It seems the best people can hope for is a cost-of-living adjustment.

However, many ways to sweeten the pot don't cost employers money out of their pockets. Those ways are easier for them to "swallow," and can provide real extra income to you.

Chapter Five of Negotiating Your Salary: How to Make $1000 a Minute covers benefits and perks that, when added to a base salary, can turn a low offer into a lucrative one. These same "bennies and perks" aren't limited to initial negotiations, they're at your service whenever you want a raise.

The biggest one, and often sweetest one of all, is time. Things have not turned out the way they were predicted years ago. When I was growing up in the 1950s, there was concern about the coming "leisure society." How we were going to cope with all the leisure time generated by all the labor-saving devices that were coming down the line? As it turns out: No problem! The four-day work week never came to pass. We're more efficient now, yes, but we work longer anyway -- we're just expected to produce twice as much.

So time is a really valuable commodity. If you can't get a cash raise, why not ask for more vacation? One week more of vacation can mean a 2 percent raise. Two weeks is 4 percent. If you arrange it all correctly, you can still do the work you need to do, and take the time off, too!

An interesting example of time negotiation happened with a client of mine who wanted to earn $40,000 a year doing library work. She was interviewed for a position that paid $20,000 a year. Instead of turning down the interview, she spent time finding out the specialty library's needs and found a way to be paid the full $20,000 but work only 20 hours a week. She discovered that they needed total reorganization, computerization, security, and better access for their patrons. She noted that they needed more than 40-hour/week coverage and planned to handle that need by having a librarian there 40 hours and using $8/hour clerks for the balance of the time and some routine work.

She proposed that she take on the project and
1) work only 20 hours a week on the higher-skilled tasks, and
2) train the two clerks to do higher-level library work besides just clerical tasks.

Once these clerks were trained, the library would have 100 person-hours of skilled coverage instead of the 40 hours skilled plus 80 hours clerical that they had been using originally.

Net result? She got paid the equivalent of $40,000: working for $20,000, but only half time. The library was happy, too, because with the team of three, they had better coverage all-in-all than even a full-time librarian could give them in a week.

Of course, it's unlikely you can cut down to half-time for full pay, but consider this example: I worked with a client who was putting in 10-14 hour days on the job. It was stressful, but it took that long to complete a day's work.

Since he was putting in those days already, I coached him to go to his supervisors and propose this 40-hour week: four-day week of 10 hours each (knowing he'd put in 11-12, but no matter). They agreed! So he was able to take something he was doing already (long days) and negotiate a day off he never would otherwise have had. It also forced him to up-grade the competence of his assistant who now handled things on his own on Fridays. This arrangement also made his work easier.

There are plenty of other ways to negotiate time, too. There's flextime; there are personal days; there's payment for unused vacation time. Many people don't negotiate "comp time" for days they spend at conventions, trade shows, late with customers, etc. By paying attention to getting compensated for that time (either by money, or more likely with comp time) you can increase your income dollars/per/hour.

Another clever way to make more money on the job is to gamble. Now, I don't mean running a poker game in the cafeteria; I mean betting your boss that you will meet or exceed a target. Construction deadlines, production deadlines, sales quotas, customer satisfaction survey results, cleanliness awards, employee productivity measures, accident-free days, newsletter excellence award recognition -- these are just a few of the things bosses like and will pay for.

These are called bonuses!

Discuss these compensation items with your boss at review time, or any time there is a change in your company's operating procedures. Bosses like to reward excellence. Your job is to tie the excellence in to a measurable quantity and link some dollar compensation to it, not just a "nice going" letter. You want a specific dollar bonus for this type of work.

Sometimes these things can even get you a raise outside the normal channels. For instance, I worked with a client who had a boss who was receiving criticism from the board for the high turnover in the company. The boss's compensation was tied to the overall profitability of the organization. High turnover wreaked havoc on profitability because the organization was constantly training new people and cleaning up messes from people who dropped the ball when they left in the middle of a project.

Because she knew this mattered to him personally -- not just as a company goal -- my client was able to get a bonus for lowered turnover: she got a seminar in "employee retention" and some "play time" along with it. She was able to turn the training into three days' work and seven days' vacation. And all this when the board had declared that the top raise would be 3 percent that year.

So, when looking to increase your compensation, consider taking extra value in terms of time and bonuses. Both can enrich you outside the parameters of a traditional raise.


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