Let’s dive straight in and answer three following questions:

• What is Annual Career Checkup?
• How do I do check-up?
• How often do I do a career check-up?

Once a year, we all should do an annual career check-up. Because it is so easy to let a year to pass by without having to check the vector in which your career going in.

And suddenly you don’t want to find yourself somewhere you don’t want to be. 

So, what I am going to try help you do is take a couple of hours of your year to think about your career, where you are, what are you doing, what you want to be doing more often. 

And I am going to give you a little check list, so you will be able to decide whether next year you would like to do the same thing or you’d like to have a certain change, or something completely different. 

Annual Career CheckUp:Current Situation

The check-up itself is split into two parts: the first one involves a lot of research, and information gathering, thinking about yourself, what you want to do, what your plans are. And the second part is the list of actions that you are going to take that is going to be defined depending on the information you have gathered throughout the first part.

Usually, career consultants recommend to always include a self development section into your list of actions. Take at least one course a year to maintain the professional growth. Which course to take is entirely up to you and the direction you want to take in your career.

Analyse yourself

The self analysis exists to help you understand: 

• What you do?
• Why you do it?
• What thing(s) you would like to do more of in the future?
• What thing(s) you would like to do less of in the future?

Even if you have done self analysis in the past, it is important to do it regularly. What we do and what we want to do always changes over time partly because our values and circumstances around us are fluid and tend to change and partly because of our experiences we gain over time.

The most important part here is not to lie to yourself. No one is going to read self analysis unless you want them to, so it is safe for you to be as frank as possible with yourself. Don’t change your answers and don’t say write something down because it sounds fancier. There’s no judge besides you, so don’t be hard on yourself and look into what it is that you really want to do. 

It’s okay to take a decision to stay in the same organisation, your Annual Career Checkup doesn’t mean that you need to change! But it is important to continue the grow.