Sunday, March 24, 2013

Build Your Career Master Plan with a Mind Map



A career plan is a map that guides you to where you really want to go professionally. While there are several approaches to career planning and mapping your way to your next job, a mind map is an excellent tool for brainstorming and organizing your career ideas—especially if you're not sure yet what you want to do.
As Farnoosh writes on the Prolific Living blog, mind maps help you visually and textually organize your thoughts in a way that gives you a structure, linking related concepts. You can use a mind map to brainstorm and discover your career purpose.

This example includes what Farnoosh calls the "foundational pillars" of your career plan—things you need to explore and answer to find your ideal career and plan where you want to go. They include:

  • Current job or role
  • Career goals and dreams (short and long term)
  • Your big why: Why you want to do the work
  • Core values: Values you're not willing to compromise on, such as flexibility or integrity
  • Limits and boundaries: What you're not willing to do or whom you wouldn't want to work with
  • Top strengths
  • Desired strengths
  • Education investment in yourself: What you're willing to invest for yourself and career
  • Execution strategies: What you might do (e.g., change jobs) to accomplish your plan
  • Role models
  • Ideal client or company
  • Ideal professional self: Describe how you want to see yourself and been seen as professionally

As you fill out the answers to these, no doubt other branches and levels will surface, creating a wide web of ideas to help you get a clearer picture of not only where you want to go but also, perhaps, how to get there.

Read complete at: lifehacker.com | Prolific Living

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