7 Steps to Review Your Career at Year-End

At the end of each year, I inevitably ask myself: “Self, where do you stand?” While this question pops up as related to all areas of my life, it also inevitably gets asked of my work. Like most of us, the majority of my time is spent working. Reaching December 31^st also means that twelve full months have elapsed during which most of my waking days have been spent pursuing some professional or business goal or another. What it also means is that it’s time to review your career at year-end.

While we’re all about looking forward, especially as we start a new year, it’s important to look back at what our experiences have taught us. This is all the more prevalent in our careers as these are not built in a year or so. It’s the sum of countless lessons learnt from the cubicle to the office that create real success. Not the success borrowed from your frenemies’ timelines on social media, but lasting success on your own terms.

7 Steps to Review Your Career at Year-End-2

Take a pause as the year ends to quickly review where you stand in your career. If you’re unsure where to start, consider these 7 steps:

Start Within!

How do you feel about your career? Are you as excited as you were when you started out at the beginning of the year? Or are you dragging yourself out of bed every morning? Are you justifying the way you feel by the fact that you need to pay bills and do what you’ve got to do?

Checking in with yourself is the first step to re-evaluate your career at the end of each year. This is not to say that you should beat yourself up for feeling the way you do. However, we should all make an honest assessment of where you stand emotionally as related to your career. It’s normal to evolve and change. It’s also normal that your desires and tastes evolve with time. What’s not normal is to deny the emotional impact your work has on you and your life if you want to create success on your own terms.

Goal Check Time!

As the end of the year approaches, where do you stand as related to the career goals you set at the beginning of the year? Did you get that promotion you had planned for? Have you made that lateral move? Are you closer to finding a new job, or leaving your 9-to-5 to work on your business?

Many of us avoid reviewing the goals we set at the beginning of the year because it can be a painful exercise if we did indeed fail. However, we must understand that failure is not only normal, but also necessary. Failing means you’ve tried, and that you may need to re-evaluate those goals. Yet, you need to assess these goals first in order to move forward.

Do An Opportunity Check!

Now let’s talk opportunities. What have you learnt this year? Every year should bring about new opportunities to progress, learn and advance. This is not just about scoring a promotion, raise or the book deal of the year. It’s about being better and further than where you started.

Look past the usual symbols of success such as money and status, and look for ways, even the smallest of ways, in which you have progressed in your career. It may be a new training you took, a good performance review, or some praise from your managers. Recognize the good.

Also, recognize those areas where you missed opportunities, and ask yourself why. The most important part of this process is to understand what worked well and what didn’t, so you can re-adjust your approach in the new year.

Assess where you stand!

This can be a tricky part of your review process. When asking yourself if you are where you should be in your career, it should not be to reflect what others are telling you about yourself. Neither is it to beat yourself up because you are not where society thinks you should be at.

Rather, this is where you should use your own barometer of success. Are you where you think you should be according to what is important to you? If you feel like you haven’t progressed enough, then it may be time to devise a plan to go further in the new year. If you do, don’t rest on your laurels, but continue to learn and better yourself.

Create Your Career Vision!

Now project yourself onto the future, and ask yourself what your career looks like in the next year, or in the next five years? This part of your review process is crucial, as it will determine how you re-orient and re-engineer your goals as you step into the new year.

What is it that you want more of? Less of? What is the next step for you? What is your next milestone?

Write down your Career Vision statement for the next year, and read it aloud to yourself as often as possible. It should represent where you see yourself in your career in as much detail as possible.

Take Action!

Now it’s time to draw a Career Action Plan for yourself. This is where you actually devise specific steps you need to accomplish what you desire in your career. It may mean taking on more complex assignments, going back to school, being more assertive, etc.

Whatever it is, make sure to list in your Career Action Plan for the next year. Keep this action plan handy as you start the new year.

Use your village!

It takes a village to build a successful career, according to what your view of success is and to what is important to you. Review your goals at the end of the year is an even more powerful process if you can share it with people who can help you. Whether it’s a mentor, a trusted manager or colleague, or even a dear friend, consider discussing the results of your year-end review with someone you trust.

This will help you bounce some ideas off of someone else’s, and come up with even more insight.