Manage Your Career Like a Business

reproduced from my linkedin article

I recently came across the notion that job seekers are a in a "business of one" - in other words, job seekers should view themselves as building up their own self-business. This means, everyone of us are indeed business owners!

With this, then we need to take it to the next step, and plan our career like a business. We need a Business Plan. As with any business plan, we would need to factor in the following aspects:

• Vision, Mission, Goals and Objectives - we need to identify what we want to achieve with our careers, and project this out into long term and medium term targets, and especially list goals & objectives which are achievable and measurable
• SWOT analysis - just like a business, we need to understand ourselves. In particular, we need to build on our strengths, work styles and preferences, and how we can attack opportunities. 
• Market Analysis - once we understand ourselves, we need to do some leg work and know our target market. Research the companies and identify how we can solve their problems. 
• Go-to-market strategy - job seekers need to position themselves as problem solvers, and clearly communicate their unique value proposition. Building a personal brand if you will. Communication channels (eg social media like linkedin) should be identified and marketing content (eg resume) drawn up. Offline tactics and activities (eg informational interviews, reaching out to networks) followed through.
• Milestones and Key activities - this is our tracking mechanism to measure progress and forecast necessary activities and other linkages 
• Critical Success Factors - we need to be clear what is critical to achieving our goals. How can our family or network help? Do we need to be trained in a new area?

 Once the plan is drawn up, its not sealed in stone and cast aside. Like all good business plans, it will be tweaked, revised and revisited regularly. Its not a static document

Above all, once this plan is done, TAKE ACTION & TAKE CHARGE!