Why not use that start of year momentum to rethink and recharge your career plan in 2016?
January is a fantastic time to take charge of your career again and ready yourself for that next step up. You have had a short breather during the festive season and that step away from the busy every day will have given you the chance to reflect on where you want to be. This is the first, important step toward your 2016 career plan.
Have a Vision.
Identify where it is you want to be in the next few years of your career, and then you can work out the route to it. Perhaps you want to have more responsibility within the marketing department, rise to become the marketing manager for the EMEA region, or to Head of Marketing, to VP? Or perhaps you want to break into a new sector? Wherever you are in your career, there’ll be room to grow and develop.
Know your enemy.
Which obstacles are holding you back from your dream job? What is it (i.e. skills, experience) that people in the position have, that you don’t? LinkedIn can be a useful tool here. Or if you can, use your connections and meet with someone in that role and talk to them about how they got to where they are. You’d be surprised at the number of potential mentors around you. Many would be happy to share their wider knowledge and experience to help you out. If you need a more formal setup, institutions like CIM also have formal mentoring networks in place for members.
Define Short term goals.
Once you’ve identified what it is you are missing – be it a skills or experience gap or the right contact network – you can plan to right it. The technique of pre-writing your future CVs can be a good motivation and a way to focus your career path. What would your future CV look like?
For marketers, short term self-improvement goals often fall into the following areas:
Life-long Learning
It’s an often said phrase but it holds true: “If you have decided that your current skills are good enough, you have also decided that your current job is good enough.” We’d go further, and say you’re not even secure there. As a marketer in a fast-moving industry, learning from thought leaders, industry publications, colleagues and competitors and your own marketing activities should be second nature to keep pace. You might want to get a competitive edge with formal study. Many have taken big strides with a CIM marketing qualification or sharpened up their business know-how with an MBA.
Creating
For any kind of content marketer, writing is your lifeblood. But you won’t often get to show off and emblazon your work with your name. For this, a personal blog is the place to brand yourself and prove your skills. Taking speaking opportunities at conferences and events is another great platform for your personal brand and for getting yourself known within your industry
Connecting
There’s a statistic doing the rounds that over 50% of all jobs are obtained from contact networks. We won’t pretend to know if this is true, but some jobs certainly never see the light of a LinkedIn advertisement. Sometimes it really is about who you know, and who is around to recommend you. Make time to network with other marketers. You might learn from them and they might be vital in connecting the dots to a future employer. Proper networking is about active engagement, don’t wait for people to come to you, instead actively reach out. Of course, an easier, less time-consuming option is to utilize the wider network of a trusted recruitment partner working in your space. If you’re in technology marketing, naturally we’d recommend drawing on ours, no surprises there. Having been recruiting exclusively in this area for over 20 years now, the strength of our network is a valuable resource to tap into.
Excelling
Your current job might be the best place to start your career. Clarify your goals with your boss to really focus on what will give you recognizable success, as we discussed earlier this month and set about hitting those targets. Stretch yourself by jumping on opportunities to expand your experience in new areas and work with new people.
Escaping
The best way to develop as a marketer is to be working with the right people: senior marketers who inspire you and who you can learn from. If there’s not scope for progress in your current role, you might want to rethink where you are and consider moving on. Exploring job opportunities elsewhere, and going through the interview process, will sharpen up your presentation skills and self-knowledge, even if you were to not secure a new job at the end of it.
Don’t have a burning ambition or career goal? Then some words from Comedian Tim Minchin, UWA address might be for you…
I never really had one of these big dreams. And so I advocate passionate dedication to the pursuit of short-term goals. Be micro-ambitious. Put your head down and work with pride on whatever is in front of you… you never know where you might end up.
For help mapping out a career path, or simply working toward your next short-term career goal, get in touch with marketingmoves’ experienced consultants on 01932 253 352 or email mday@marketingmoves.com
