How to Use a Roadmap to Achieve Your Career Plans

A career road map will assist you in finding the best route or direction to take to achieve your career plans. It helps you outline your course of action, stay on track, overcome barriers, and celebrate successes. With a career road map you can identify what is needed to increase personal expertise in a particular work-related area. This article demonstrates how to develop a practical and effective roadmap you can use over and over again to achieve your career plans and take advantage of career opportunities.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Notebook and Pen
• Career goal
• Action steps
• Learning partner

1. 
   Career Goal

   Select a goal that will bring you closer to achieving your career plans, and which can be achieved in 90 days. If you do not believe that your goal can be accomplished within that time frame, break it down into smaller pieces.

2. 
   Career Opportunities

   Consider what you need to know to be more effective where you are currently in your career and what would increase your personal awareness of current career opportunities.

3. 
   Desired Outcomes

   Describe or list your desired outcomes. How will you know when you have achieved your career plans? What will you be able to do differently in the future?

4. 
   Brainstorm

   Brainstorm all the actions you could take to help you achieve your career goals. Record these actions in chronological order and assign each action step a target completion date.

5. 
   Improvements

   Pinpoint the changes & improvements you wish to make in your career, and the actions you will take to ensure an interesting, challenging and rewarding career that uses your best strengths and natural talents.

6. 
   Barriers

   Identify and anticipate the barriers you must overcome in implementing your career plans.

7. 
   Resources

   List all of the resources available to assist you in achieving your career plans. These resources might include key people with the necessary expertise, additional training, networking or other items.

8. 
   Career Partners

   Select several people with whom you can partner to achieve your career plans, give you advice and discuss your progress.

Tips & Warnings

• For maximum effect, your career road map should be well planned with detailed action steps and target completion dates. This will help you to organize and prioritize all of the new things you will discover on the road to achieving your career plans.
• Use the resources below to help you plan an effective Career plan and reach your career goals.

Resources

• Take Your Career to a New Level
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[ShirleyLee]

on 2/12/2009 I thought this was a good plan. I plan to review the Top 10 Career Resources you listed, but at the time I tried the link the website as down.