Across the land, individuals and organizations await the changes that 2017 has in store for them. Some were initiated at the ballot box in November and others---more personal in nature---will be instigated by resolutions that are typically made at the beginning of each New Year. There are also those time honored resolutions that we drag out each year under the guise that this time we’re going to do something about them.

New Year’s resolutions represent subtle challenges or goals that people believe will improve their condition in life. They succeed when they are realistic and attainable and can be measured in some manner to determine success. They fail when they are unrealistic or impractical or when the person is unwilling to make the personal investment needed to bring about the desired change or redirection.

As 2017 begins, the map is dotted with individuals who will interface with search and staffing professionals in the coming weeks and months in the hopes of acquiring assistance with their personal career development or locating a more suitable situation or environment where they can practice their profession or utilize their skillset. For these change seekers, as well as for those committed to helping them, identifying career and workplace resolutions and bringing about their realization is often easier said than done. A key ingredient is a discipline or a behavioral apparatus that will ensure positive results. 

Good career or workplace resolutions should possess as many of the following characteristics as possible:

Begin with a period of self-awareness and personal appraisal.

Involve an assessment of what’s right and wrong with the current employment situation.

Maximize the contributions the search and staffing professional.

Ascertain options and opportunities that result in realistic, attainable goals, ones that will be apparent when they have been realized.

Generate an implementation plan that will optimize the resolution’s potential for success.

Ten Resolutions Worthy of Consideration

The search and staffing professionals reading this must view themselves as facilitators---agents that nurture, encourage and support these resolutions through the five characteristics suggested above and result in their achievement. In this capacity you may also have to educate the candidate to look at life and career differently than she or he has in the past. That education might include getting your candidates to consider one or more of the following ten resolutions:

Move from a job to a career mentality

Look in the mirror regularly and then project forward

Construct and strengthen networks

Learn something new and take it to work

Enjoy work more and reward oneself when work-related achievements occur

Listen more and talk less

Arrest personal time-bandits

Experiment and innovate with the goal being career growth and mobility

Take one’s career pulse occasionally to assess resolution progress

Enjoy life away from work a little more than in the past

Any one or combination of the above resolutions could have a positive impact on an individual’s career or employment. Make certain, however, that candidates separate career and workplace resolutions from generic life challenges. Exercising more regularly, cleaning out the garage and doing a better job of managing personal finances might be important personal goals for 2017, but search and staffing professionals need to target their facilitating where it will be the most productive.

If, however, the above list of resolutions is too formidable or if making reasonable career and workplace resolutions is out of the question for your candidates, then simply suggest they pull back and wait until 2018. That is---if “stop procrastinating” was not on their personal resolution list!

Coming in February ~ The Signals that Suggest it is Time for a Job Change

Direct future topics suggestions for The Career Mechanic to him at ednow@aol.com