Career Planning

There are three elements that have to converge for successful career planning: the job market, your talents and you as a person. Typically, a person looks at the elements in that order.

Let‘s face it, most of us do not like change; therefore we often look at a job or career change (downsizing, a new boss, a reorganization or personal reasons for leaving) as negative. We might check out Monster.com or CareerBuilder.com and try to find what is hot and where the jobs are. We then look at our talents, the ones we have and the ones we might acquire, to see if they can fit in with what is available. Then, we determine if the job or occupation suits us.

For successful career planning in today‘s world, let me strongly suggest that you fundamentally REVERSE the order of the elements. In other words, start with you, then consider your marketable talents and then worry about the job market. Common sense says you are more likely to be satisfied in your occupation by going about it this way. You will also come to the job market more focused. Plus, you will likely land a job 2-3 times more quickly this way! If you talked to 100 properly trained career counselors, they would all tell you the same thing.