The career plan starts with your current status and proceeds to your Grand Goal through the intermediate steps required to achieve that goal. Indicate after "Job or Title or Position" your objective for the given date. Indicate after "Salary" an objective salary for each step based on your own desires and knowledge of the job market. The "Prerequisites" for each step are the requirements you must satisfy in order to proceed from the previous step, such as additional experience in a given discipline, improvement of a certain skill, additional education, or a professional certification.
The columns start with "Today", your current status. The "Tomorrow" column lists your immediate objectives for your next job change. The subsequent columns can be spaced chronologically as appropriate. I suggest setting objectives for 3, 5, and 10 years from now, as those milestones are commonly asked about in interviews. The final column is headed "Grand Goal" with the additional requirement of your having to establish the date by which you would like to attain that goal.
All of the information for the intermediate steps in your Career Plan may not be recordable as yet. At this point, however, you should know where you are today; perhaps where you want to be tomorrow; and the details of your Grand Goal. As you continue the process of job hunting, the additional information will begin to develop and should be complete by the time you select your next job.
The information in this chart is dynamic. You will be updating it continually. Salary figures might be revised regularly because of inflation if nothing else and because of changing expectations and opportunities. More intermediate steps wall be added and more prerequisites will be listed as you learn more about yourself and your career field, both while job hunting and after securing your new job.
DETERMINING YOUR CRITICAL CRITERIA
The final exercise in your homework, preliminary to the actual job hunt, is the determination of the factors that are important to you in your work environment. You need to identify these factors now so that you may intelligently investigate and evaluate your subsequent job alternatives. To do this, fantasize again.
Imagine you have a job that is minimally acceptable on all conceivable points. The job satisfies, just barely, all of your needs and wants. You are comfortable in the job but not ecstatic. Then one day Super boss walks up to your desk and says, "I have good news. Today, I am going to grant you one wish and only one wish. I will improve for you any factor of your job environment. The improvement will be significant but within reason. Everything else will remain unchanged. So what is most important to you? What do you want me to improver?
How will you answer? Do you want a higher salary or shorter hours or a bigger office or a better title or more challenge or what? Table 1 lists possible factors for you to consider. Don't restrict yourself to only those items listed. Add any others that you consider to be important.
Suppose, after careful thought, you answered, "Great, I would like a company car!" You have determined that, all things being equal, a company car is the most important factor to you in your work environment.
Suppose then that Super boss, unfortunately, responds, I’m terribly sorry. I forgot to tell you that a company car is one factor I can’t do anything about. It's out of my hands. Please accept my apologies, but don't be discouraged. Tell me what the next most important factor to you is.
After you bury your disappointment and think again about your priorities, suppose you answer, "If I can’t have a company car, and everything else stays the same, I'd like to markedly increase the scope of my responsibilities to be approximately twice what it is now." You have determined that responsibility is the second most important factor to you.
However, Superboss laughs nervously and tugs at his collar, He says, 'This is quite embarrassing, but responsibility is the only other thing that I simply have no control over. Please, try again. If everything else remains the same, what is the next most important factor to you?
You play this game with the mythical Superboss at least ten times or as many times as the number of work environment factors on your list. When you are finished, you have a comprehensive list, in descending order, of the Critical Criteria that are important to you in your job. You will use these criteria as points of investigation when interviewing potential employers, as a response to a commonly asked interview question, and as factors of evaluation when deciding among various job offers. Your most important criteria can be used to establish specific objectives for your next job, such as a target salary for a specific title or a given geographic location or a switch into a desired industry.
Notice that money normally does not rank as the most important reason. Therefore, do not feel surprised or disappointed if it is not at the top of your list. Of course, if it is most important to you, list it first. You may simply be more honest than everyone else.
You are now ready to begin your study of aggressive job-hunting techniques.
