In much the same way as your doctor recommends that you undertake regular medical check-ups, to ensure that you are in good health and to detect any potential health challenge before it gets out of hand and becomes unmanageable, you also need a career check-up to evaluate how you are doing at the workplace and how your career is progressing.
Here’s a list of Top 7 questions you should always be asking yourself, as a part of your career check-up:
#1: Do You Feel Fulfilled By Your Work?
Fulfillment, according to Wikipedia, has to do with the achievement of something you desire. Cambridge dictionary puts it more succinctly: a feeling of happiness because you are doing what you intend to do in life.
Congratulations if you feel fulfilled, but if you do not, decide if what you are doing is what you should be doing or if there is a better way you should be doing It’s never too late to get it right. If you have to think of something else to do, so be it.
#2: Do You Feel Optimistic About Where Your Current Career is Heading?
Are you hopeful and confident about the future of what you are doing now? Based on all indicators to succeed in your career, are you sure all will be really well with you? Can you see a light at the end of the tunnel? Be sure of the basis of your optimism if you are, or take necessary steps to ensure you are not on a fruitless journey. Don’t just have faith. Faith without work is not a career development strategy.
#3: Do You Know What Your Next Career Step Is?
Success according to a definition is succeeding in succession. There is always a time to step up your career game instead of remaining stagnant.
We live in a time of constant change and you need to know what your next career step should be at every point in time.
Will you be better of changing your location? What is the new thing in your career you should be doing? Someone said, if you don’t know where you are going, everywhere you get to will seem like your destination. You must have a career progression plan and know when to make the next move.
#4: Does Your Career Support Your Preferred Lifestyle?
If your career does not support your preferred lifestyle, you are not likely to be happy with what you are doing and cannot definitely feel fulfilled. Your career should be able to guarantee you the basic things of life and a standard of living commensurate with your status. While you need to cut your coat according to your cloth, not your size, you must take conscious steps to ensure that your career can guarantee the life you want and deserve.
#5: Are You Learning And Growing In Your Current Role?
Apart from cash, the currency of this age is knowledge, and you need to keep learning to ensure growth in whatever you do. Put bluntly, someone said, if you are not learning, you are dying in installments! To learn, you need to desire new knowledge and be willing to unlearn some of the old stuff that can be a clog in your wheel of progress.
Your growth in whatever you are doing should at least be steady, if it is not rapid, for you to know you are making progress.
#6: Have You Taken Steps To Develop Your Skills In The Past 12 Months?
Progress or success is not only what you wish, but what you work hard at. What steps are you taking to develop your skills? What don’t you know that you should know?
Where can you learn it? Which conference, workshop and seminar should you be attending? What professional body or network should you belong to, to learn from others in your field?
#7: Are You Clear About What You Want From Your Career?
What do you really want from your career? If you are not clear about what you want you will just be counting years and will not know if you are succeeding or failing. Know what you want and do what you need to have it.
You need to have a very clear and articulated career mission statement which you have to consciously check to ensure that you get what you want from your career on a continuous basis.
