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Planning your career is not an activity that should be done once -in secondary school or university- and then left as you embark on your career. Rather, it’s an activity that is best done on a regular basis. According to a recent survey, an average worker is expected to shift careers multiple times in a lifetime, so it’s never too late to start planning your career. A successful career usually begins with careful career planning. It is your responsibility to give it the seriousness it deserves. A career plan helps you chronicle both your long and short-term career goals and allows you measure success, career moves, training and choices to make in the bid to attain your planned-out career footprint. This will ultimately steer you on a path with measurable goals. Here I’ll share some tips to aid your career planning.

Self-Audit

Carrying out an evaluation of yourself, interests, and your skills is important to knowing what you first or next career step should be. If you’re on the lookout for a new career, the field you’re most interested should be the deciding factor. If you’re looking to advance yourself in your chosen, your present skillset and how you can improve on that should be the most important thing to you. From these, you can then begin to set career goals for yourself. The goals you set for yourself have to be of the right mix of realism and ambition, do not set goals that you are sure you cannot reach but at the same time remember to push yourself out of your comfort zone. A major component of career planning is setting short-term (in the coming year) and long-term (beyond a year) career and job goals. Once you initiate this process, another component of career planning becomes reviewing and adjusting those goals as your career plans progress or change — and developing new goals once you accomplish your previous goals.

Career Plan Research

After identifying the career path that captures your interest, you need to dedicate time to research your career plan. Research jobs related to your career path and plan. You should also look beyond your current job for transferrable skills, some workers get so wrapped up in their job titles that they don’t see any other career possibilities for themselves. Every job requires a certain set of skills, and it’s much better to categorize yourself in terms of these skill sets than be so myopic as to focus just on job titles.

Do not forget to review current job and career trends, having information about career trends is vital to long-term career planning success. Besides knowledge of these trends, the other advantage of conducting this research is the power it gives you to adjust and strengthen your position, your unique selling proposition. A key aspect to job and career success is having a unique set of accomplishments, skills and education that make you better than all others in your career.

Execute, Review and Repeat

It is supremely important that you remain consistent in planning and executing your career plans. You should review them, repeat what works and get rid of things that don’t yield results. When planning, ensure your goals are SMART; Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely.

Planning your career with the techniques above will help you clarify career ideas and focus your effort, time and resources on driving your career forward.

To be irreplaceable, one must always be different; the sentiment of this quote is one that you have to embody at your next job interview. Interviewers typically invite hordes of people to interviews for any position, it is therefore imperative that you make sure that you stand out in some way (preferably for good reasons) and if your resume isn’t so remarkable, here are some tips that will help your interview be memorable to your interviewers.

Know more about the company than anyone else

The first question you need to ask yourself when you’ve been invited for an interview, is what you know about the company. At some point in the interview, you will be asked what you know about the business —if you can’t answer that question, it makes you look like someone that doesn’t care too much about the opportunity. Go into the interview knowing their mission statement, understanding the company’s target market, and knowing more about the history of the business than anyone else. Research can be easily conducted via the company’s website, trade publications, and by asking current employees (if you know any). Being prepared and being someone that can show you are prepared provides the interviewer with the impression you are interested in the potential job, took the time to plan ahead, and care about the outcome.

Turn the interview into a conversation

We tend to think of interviews like a press conference or a question and answer session. Stop thinking of an interview as a series of questions you have to answer correctly to “pass”, this gives the feeling that the interview is a test. Think of the interview as more of a conversation with your boss. To aid this, come to the interview armed with a good question, for example if they ask

“why did you apply here” you can say,

“I’m interested in virtual reality, and marketing is what I do best, so when I saw a virtual reality company like yours needed a Marketer, it was a no-brainer for me to apply.

“I’m really excited about the opportunity. One thing I noticed when reading about your company is that you seem to take a different approach to marketing than most of your competitors, can you share why that is?”.

You can also find other ways to work in your questions asides from the typical “Do you have any questions” question that the interviewer asks, you can ask about current projects the company working, the challenges they are facing, work in an appropriate joke or a personal experience into the conversation and before you know it, the interview starts to feels like a regular chat between colleagues.

Deflect trick questions

Interviewers like to ask questions that back interviewees into a corner, when the interviewer invariably asks “You had a boss from hell didn’t you”, what do you do? You can’t exactly answer yes and saying no might not exactly be the honest response, its best to be diplomatic and deflect those kinds of questions. You could respond with not everyone is meant to have great bosses, but that you’ve learned techniques to work well with all kinds of challenging personalities.

Interviewers also like to ask you what your negative traits are? Some advisers recommend you use your hyperactivity or your impatience to your advantage, saying it helps get things done. Although it sounds like solid advice, it still sounds forced. Why not move the conversation forward, saying “I really can’t think of anything offhand. Can I get back to you on it?” Maybe what they’re really looking for is to see if you’ll falter. If you come up with a quick answer and a sincere smile, then maybe you gave them the answer.

Focus on personal branding.

One of my favorite quotes by American poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” Several people tend to project personalities that they feel the company would like to hire. They often find themselves not being themselves during interviews and put up an interview persona and end up faltering during the interviews. It is always best to be you during interviews because that’s what you’re most comfortable with and you can’t put a premium on being comfortable during interviews. I am not saying you let go of professional norms, I do encourage you to bring your authentic self to the job search process. Being you also helps you highlight your passions and interest, you should also share your areas of improvement (and not just fake ones that you spice up for interviews). Your honesty will be a breath of fresh air for the interviewer.

Career Planning Tips to help you succeed

Stand Out in that Interview!