Six-Step Process to Conducting a Year-End Review of Your Career | Randall S. Hansen, Ph.D.

The end of the year is often a time of many events — wrapping up business for the year while also wrapping holiday presents. This article presents something you can give to yourself — something that you can get done during the holiday lull or over some vacation days — a quick and easy process for examining what you’ve accomplished in your career this year and where you want to go with it next year.

Of course, you may have already done at least some preliminary work on reviewing the year — especially if your employer hands out year-end bonuses or conducts year-end performance reviews — and if so, that’s a good place to start your year-end review.

But unlike your on-the-job performance review, the purpose of this article is to suggest you consider conducting an even more important assessment — taking stock of your career. Now is the perfect time to review where you are, where you’ve been, and where you want to go.

Before you begin your assessment, take a moment to ask yourself the most important question: Am I happy and fulfilled by my job and career? No matter how successful you’ve been in the past 11 months, if you are fundamentally unhappy with your work, spend the vast majority of your year-end review focusing on self-assessment and discovering your career passion. Consider a side-trip from this article to the Quintessential Careers Finding Your Career Passion Tutorial.

Don’t rush your review. Consider using a weekend or one or more of your vacation days to reflect on your career. You don’t need to — and probably shouldn’t — complete all six steps in one sitting. Break it up over several days if you like.

Step One: Review Career Goals.

Did you set any goals for your career this year — formally or informally? Most people have some idea of what they want to accomplish next in their careers, such as getting a promotion and/or raise or perhaps achieving better work/life balance. Setting some goals is an important activity because goals help provide the focus you need to move your career forward — and to avoid distractions or activities that may slow your career progress (or worse, devalue you). So, if you had any goals for this year, answer these questions:

• Did I achieve my career goals?
• Am I satisfied with what I did relative to my goals?
• Did anything happen to change my goals over the course of the year?
• How should I modify my goals for next year?

Step Two: Review Your Career Year.

What have you done this year? This step is about documenting your career progression ad identifying key achievements. Thinking about all you’ve done over the past 11 months or so, ask yourself these questions:

• What have I accomplished?
• What new skills have I acquired?
• What have I learned?
• What opportunities were gained and lost?
• How am I better today than I was at the beginning of the year?

Step Three: Develop Your Career Synopsis.

Where are you in your career? Review all aspects of your career and examine where you stand at this juncture. Some questions to ask yourself:

• Am I where I should be in my career?
• What has helped or hindered my progression?
• Am I happy with my current employer?
• What are my strengths and weakness?

Step Four: Envision Your Future.

What’s your next career step? Take some time to plan for next year (and perhaps beyond), picturing the path you want your career to take. Again, here are some questions to help you:

• What do I want to be doing more of in my career?
• What do I want to be doing less of in my career?
• What’s the next step in my career?
• When should I be taking this next step?
• What’s my ideal/ultimate career dream?

Step Five: Career Action Steps for Your Future.

How will you get to that future career? Make a list of what you need to do — career goals for the coming year — to get to where you want to be next in your career. These might be things such as building your network, gaining additional experiences, changing employers, strengthening your career brand, or pursuing additional training/education/certifications. Questions to ask yourself:

• What do I need to prepare myself for this next step?
• Do I need to find a new employer to make the next step?
• How do I position myself for this next step?

Step Six: Share Your Career Vision.

Are your career goals and action plans feasible? Schedule a meeting with your mentor(s) and to get reactions to your plan, as well as advice for achieving it.

Final Thoughts on Career Year-End Reviews

Once you’ve completed these six steps, you should not only know yourself and your career better, but have some specific goals and action steps to help you progress along a career plan.

Another benefit from completing this year-end review is that the results from part of the analysis should assist you in updating your resume if you have not been keeping it current as the year progressed. Even if you are extremely happy with your employer, it makes sense to have a current resume for that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, or worse, if your employer decides its time to downsize the workforce.

Finally, use these free Quintessential Careers resources to assist you with your career year-end review and plan for your future:

• Using a SWOT Analysis in Your Career Planning
• The Art of Career and Job-Search Networking
• Career Branding Tutorial
• Career Planning Articles
• Your Career Planning and Job-Search Calendar
• Plotting Story of Your Ideal Career
• Moving Up the Ladder: 10 Strategies for Getting Yourself Promoted
• Value of a Mentor: Find Yourself a Mentor
• Workplace Resources for Dealing With Your Current Job/Employer

Questions about some of the terminology used in this article? Get more information (definitions and links) on key college, career, and job-search terms by going to our Job-Seeker’s Glossary of Job-Hunting Terms.

Let me know what you think below.

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Driving yourself to perform: If not you, then who? | Eugene Whelan

We all want to do better. Better at work, better in life, better at everything. But how do we achieve this and do we really know what better is?

Performance at work has always been a hot topic. At worst, performance (or the lack of it) can put a company under, at best it can make it positively flourish.

It's the reason we have performance reviews, targets and KPIs – so that our boss and the management of the company can tell how we, and they, are doing by performance results.

But performance isn’t just about facts, figures and targets. It’s not just about meeting expectations to a satisfactory level within the work place.

In terms of ourselves, performance, and our understanding of it, is the key to personal and professional development and the business success.

Or to use a driving analogy: if you can't see where you are on the map, how can you work out your route, or know when you have arrived.

So it's down to you to manage your own performance at work if you want to get the results and recognition you want and get to where you really want to be.

 North, South, East or West?
Back to our map analogy. Do you know where you are in terms of performance at work?

Have you looked at your performance, analysed your strengths and weaknesses and more importantly accepted them?

Have you ever conducted your own performance review? If not, then you need to, now.
Choose a time-frame – say the last year. Brainstorm a list of your achievements (don’t be shy), your failures (do be honest!), your challenges and issues, obstacles you feel you overcame, situations you think may have got the better of you and anything else you think may affect or contribute to your performance at work. These can include factors outside of work as well.

Group the different elements together and you will have a good idea of where you are on the map performance-wise. Then you need to decide what you need to change so you can improve your performance.

 Analysis and Investment

Change is usually a good thing, but invariably very hard to do, especially when it needs to be self-motivated.

However, now you have reviewed your current position, you will have a very good indication of where you may be falling short, not only in terms of your mindset around your job and your company, but also in terms of where you may need additional learning and development to do your job better and improve your position.

Having a good awareness of the skills/abilities you lack to improve your performance and further your career is the starting point to doing something about that.

This is when communication with your superior is key. You will need to make an investment in yourself and ideally the source of the investment will come from your company. You just need to convince them why it will be commercially profitable for them to do so. Performance reviews are the perfect time to do this.

It's this simple:

1. Arrange a meeting with your supervisor to discuss your self-review and use it to point out your strengths but also the areas where you feel you are lacking. (Ask for their feedback on this.)
2. Highlight the type of training or investment you have identified you need to undertake, to improve upon those areas. (Do they agree with you?)
3. Discuss how afterwards, you would be more effective and productive in areas, and how this would impact on your contribution to the company as whole. (What's their opinion?)

Well it’s not really that simple but you have to be the “driver” in this situation, your boss won’t just stop and hand it to you.

 So. Get your Performance Sat-Nav in Gear

If you want to get better at what you do, if you want to succeed and if you want to further your career then you need to take control.

These days, the burden of self-improvement is squarely on the shoulders of employees not the managers. The thinking being that if you want to “get ahead” then you need to do something about it. And the more pro-active you are the more favourably it will be looked upon.

That means you need to know where you are headed and how you are going to get there.

Based on your own performance review and your assessment of the investment you need to improve your skill and performance levels, you need to create a road-map of actions that will help you make it happen.

Again take the time-frame of a year (or three if that’s more reasonable) and decide where you want to be at the end of that time. Then work backwards as to what you need to do to achieve that goal.

Could it be finding and paying for your own training if it is a crucial area that just can’t wait? Is it a daily strategy or ethos that will lift your performance levels and your mindset? Perhaps you need to change the way you do or approach certain tasks or projects?

Whatever it is, it’s up to you to decide. And at the crux of all of this is honesty.

You need to be truly honest with yourself about what you need to improve upon, so that you can actually make those improvements happen.

If you can’t then you will be looking at a map with no roads and you’ll be going nowhere.

So ask yourself this question: What have you done to improve your skills, abilities, and your performance in the last six months?
Author's Bio:


Eugene Whelan is a qualified business and life coach and is the owner of One To Ten Coaching.

He has over 25 years experience at senior management level in the manufacturing and distribution industries.

Eugene has worked in various senior roles including, sales, manufacturing and commercial.

During this time he has gained an invaluable insight into the day-to-day pressures that go with such leadership roles and the expectations to be met.

Eugene is a direct and enlightened business consultant, able to see the practical side of people and situations as well as the more intangible qualities and potential of both.

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