Career is a continuous process of all career-related behaviors and activities and related attitudes, values and aspirations in a person's life, and it is also a process of realizing career, position change and work ideal in a person's life.

Simply put, a career is a person's life-long work experience. Generally speaking, our career begins with vocational study and training before employment and ends with retirement. What occupation we choose as our job is self-evident to each of us.

First of all, our future needs such as food, clothing, housing and transportation, including many young people's dreams of traveling abroad and buying a house and car, are almost met through our work;

At the same time, modern people spend most of their time in social organizations. In the decades from graduation to retirement, we have to deal with work almost every day. Therefore, it is also very important for us whether we like what we are doing, whether it is suitable and whether it is meaningful. A president once said, "In my opinion, the greatest tragedy in the world is that too many young people never find out what they really want to do. Think about it, how sad it is that a person can only earn wages when he goes to work and get nothing else! "

Therefore, be careful when choosing a job. There is an old saying in China that "men are afraid of getting into the wrong business and women are afraid of marrying the wrong husband", which to some extent reflects the importance of occupation to each of us.

Why plan your career?

First of all, I want to share a short story with you here, hoping to inspire the importance of "career planning":

Earthworm target ladder

Earthworms are my childhood friends. Earthworm is not its real name, because it is black, short and thin, so it is named.

After I was separated from Kloc-0/8 years old, I wandered around for a living. Earthworms went to college and everything went well. In this separated decade, we met almost every two or three years. Every time I like to ask him the same question: what is your future goal?

The answer is always different. The following records are the original words of the earthworm every time he talks about the target:

18 years old, high school graduation ceremony: I vowed to be the second in Li Ka-shing! I want to be the richest man in China (what a big breath)!

20 years old, Spring Festival reunion of old classmates: I want to start my own company. I am 30 years old, with assets of 20 million.

I am 23 years old, working as a technician in a factory, and my second occupation is stock trading: I am struggling to leave this factory because it is hopeless to work here. I will try my best to speculate in stocks, with 50 thousand yuan, and I will speculate to 3 million in three years (it seems possible).

25-year-old, frustrated in stock trading, proud in love, and ready to get married: I hope there will be 65438+ million in one year, so I can get married smartly (realistic idea).

26 years old, not a very beautiful wedding ceremony: if you want to have a fat man, just be a workshop director in the near future, and nothing else (whether marriage will make people mature).

At the age of 28, the efficiency of the factory where I work is declining, just as my wife is pregnant in October: I hope my name will never appear on the laid-off list (what can I say at this time).

As can be seen from the above story, the earthworm obviously didn't make a reasonable plan for his life. At the beginning, he became a technician, but he didn't study technology seriously. Instead, he went to stock trading and earned 3 million yuan. Later, I failed in stock trading and suddenly wanted to be a workshop director. Finally, he may not be very proficient in technology and worry that his name is not on the laid-off list. His unplanned life is obviously easy to fail.

In fact, if we want to succeed in our future career, we should first determine a realistic career orientation and career goals, then decompose the goals, and then design a reasonable career plan and put it into action. After continuous efforts and adjustments, I finally achieved my career development goals and achieved the greatest success in my life.

If you want to achieve great success in your career, you must first understand the general law of success. Anthony robbins, an American success master, once put forward a universal formula of success: success = clear goal+detailed plan+immediate action+inspection and correction+persistence to the end. From this formula, we can see that if we want to succeed, generally we must first understand our goals and detailed plans. We are the same in the field of career. We first choose an industry and work that is most suitable for our own development, then determine our own goals, and at the same time make a preliminary plan for our entire career. Finally, we put it into action, constantly check and revise our goals and plans, and finally stick to it, and we will certainly succeed in our career.

Career planning is of great significance to our career success.

Career planning is a process of analyzing and measuring subjective and objective factors that determine personal career choice, determining personal goals and career goals, and making reasonable career planning.

Career planning requires you to position yourself in a position where you can give full play to your advantages according to your "professional interests, personality characteristics, ability tendency, and professional knowledge and skills you have learned" and comprehensively consider various external factors, so as to maximize your self-worth. A person whose career goals are consistent with his life goals is happy, and career planning is essentially a process of pursuing the best career.

Dr Edward banfield of Harvard University's research on the driving force of American social progress found that those successful people are often people who have a long-term view of time. They will take a long-term view when planning their daily, weekly and monthly activities. They will plan for the future for five, ten or even twenty years. They allocate resources or make decisions according to their expected location in a few years. This research result is of great significance to professionals who have just entered the society. For example, we analyze a case together:

At a large job fair in Shenyang, Xiao He, who graduated from a famous university, applied for the position of mechanical engineer from an automobile company in Zhejiang. He majored in mechanical engineering and excelled in all subjects during his college years. During the five or six years after graduation, he worked as a sales and quality supervisor of drugs, air conditioners, motorcycles and other products, and changed six or seven jobs, but he had no mechanical experience. After reading his situation, the recruiter thinks that if he has been engaged in mechanical work steadily since graduation, he is just the person the company needs, but because he has no work experience in this field, the company can't hire him.

Xiao He's example illustrates the harm that many college students bring to themselves by blind employment. Because there is no long-term planning, many college students just jump ship with the tide when they are young, and they have no career orientation in their thirties. In this case, there are not many ways to continue, and repositioning requires great efforts, so we have to fall into an embarrassing situation.

Continuous change is the accumulation of life force, which requires a "long-term concept of time". Take sales as an example. The significance of your sales career is that, under normal circumstances, you must be willing to invest more than three to five years to become a real sales elite. This long-term investment will completely change your attitude towards training, daily work, customers, yourself and the community. Ichihara, the god of life insurance marketing in Japan, didn't sell a single insurance policy in the first seven months, so he had to sleep on a park bench with an empty stomach every day.

Excellent people generally have long-term plans for themselves and their lives. Having a long-term vision for our career is an important condition for our future career to reach its peak.

Success comes at a price. You must work hard for several years to reach the limit of your earning power and enjoy the lifestyle you want. We must pay the price first, and after several years of continuous efforts, we can achieve truly valuable goals. No matter where you want to get ahead, you should spend at least five years preparing. No matter what line of work you are engaged in, if you want to be outstanding, you must be mentally prepared and spend at least three to five years. It takes you a long time to develop enough professional ability to succeed in the highly competitive market. Otherwise, if we often change cities, industries and specific jobs, then as we change jobs, the relevant knowledge, skills, work experience and interpersonal relationships we have accumulated at ordinary times may not be used at that time. In the end, like Xiao He mentioned above, we may graduate for many years, but we haven't really found a job that suits us, and we haven't really established our own unique competitive advantage, and we are caught in a situation where there is almost no way to continue in our existing jobs.

A successful career begins with setting appropriate goals.

Guide: the goal is strength, and the struggle will succeed.

Studying the success track of some successful people, we will find that most of them have their own clear goals before they go to success. Napoleon Hill, a successful American scientist, famously said in Get Rich in One Year that the starting point of all achievements is desire. The higher a person pursues, the faster his talents develop. The whole world gives way to those who pursue their goals wholeheartedly. Hill believes that all success must first set a clear goal. When the pursuit of a goal becomes a kind of persistence, you will find that all actions will lead you to this goal. The goal is strength, and the struggle will succeed. People who have developed intellectually and achieved something in their careers at all times and all over the world have clear and firm goals. Former British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli was originally an unsuccessful writer, but none of his published works left a deep impression on people. Later, disraeli set foot in politics and decided to become the British Prime Minister. He overcame many obstacles and was elected as a member of parliament, chairman of the House of Commons and chief justice of the High Court until 1868 achieved his goal of becoming the British Prime Minister. Disraeli summed up his success in a short speech: "The secret of success lies in sticking to the goal." A clear and firm goal is the basic premise to win success and make a difference, because the significance of a firm goal is not only to persevere in the face of all kinds of setbacks and difficulties, to seize the opportunity of success and realize your dreams step by step, but more importantly, to be in adversity can generate great enthusiasm for progress and maximize your potential.

Story 1: a follow-up survey on the impact of goals on life

Harvard University has a very famous follow-up survey on the impact of goals on life. The object of the survey is a group of college graduates with similar intelligence, education and environment. The result is this:

27% people have no goals;

60% people have vague goals;

10% people have clear but relatively short-term goals;

3% people have clear long-term goals.

In the next 25 years, they started their own business.

Twenty-five years later, Harvard conducted a follow-up survey on this group of students again. The result is this:

3% people have worked tirelessly in one direction for 25 years, and they have almost become successful people in all walks of life, including many industry leaders and social elites;

65,438+00% people have achieved their short-term goals and become professionals in various fields, most of whom live in the upper and middle classes of society;

60% of people, living and working stably, have no special achievements, and almost all live in the middle and lower classes of society;

The remaining 27% people have no goals in life, and their lives are very unsatisfactory. They often complain that others, society and the world "refuse to give them opportunities".

In fact, the only difference between them is that 25 years ago, some of them knew what they really wanted, some didn't know or were not very clear.

Story 2: A new life begins in a chosen direction.

Another story also illustrates the importance of clear goals and directions to our success in life:

Bisell is a small village in the western Sahara desert, adjacent to an oasis of 1.5 square kilometers. However, before Ken Levin discovered it in 1926, no one had ever walked out of the desert here. Ken Levin, as an academician of the Royal Academy of Sciences, certainly doesn't believe this statement. He asked the people here in sign language why, and everyone's answer was the same: no matter which direction you go from here, you will eventually turn to this place. In order to prove the truth of this statement, he did an experiment, which took him only three and a half days to go north from Bisell.

Why can't Bisell's people get out? Ken Levin is very confused. Finally, he had to hire an Bisell to lead the way and see what happened. They brought water and two camels for half a month. Ken Levin put away the compass and other modern equipment, only leaning against a wooden stick in the back. 10 days passed and they walked hundreds of miles. On the morning of 1 1 day, an oasis appeared in front of them. Sure enough, they returned to Bisell. This time Ken Levin finally understood that Bisell people couldn't walk out of the desert because they didn't know the Big Dipper at all.

In the endless desert, if a person walks forward by feeling, he will walk out of many circles of different sizes, and the last footprint is in the shape of a tape measure. Bisell Village is located in the middle of the vast desert, and there is no reference within thousands of kilometers of Fiona Fang. It's really impossible to get out of the desert without knowing the Big Dipper and the compass.

When Ken Levin left Bisell, he took a young man named Guser with him. He was the last person to cooperate with him. He told the young people that as long as they rest during the day and walk towards the brightest star in the north at night, they can walk out of the desert. Gusser followed Akon Levin, and three days later, he really came to the edge of the desert.

Now Bisell is a pearl in the Western Sahara Desert, attracting tens of thousands of tourists every year. As a pioneer of Bisell, the bronze statue of Guser stands in the center of the town. There is a line engraved on the base of the bronze statue: a new life begins in the selected direction.

As can be seen from the above two surveys, success requires clear goals and directions.

Story 3: What would life be like without goals?

What if we don't have a goal in life? There is a real example to illustrate what happens if a person can't see his goal:

1952 On the morning of July 4th, California coast was shrouded in dense fog. On Catalina Island, 2 1 mile west of Haiyan, a 34-year-old woman waded into the Pacific Ocean and began to swim to the California coast. If she succeeds, she will be the first woman to swim across the English Channel. This woman's name is Florence Godwick. Before that, she was the first woman to swim across the English Channel from the coasts of England and France.

That morning, the sea was cold, her body was numb and foggy, and she could hardly see the boat escorting her. A few hours later, thousands of people in Qian Qian watched her on TV. The shark approached her several times and was shot away. She is still swimming. The biggest problem with her cross-sea swimming in the past was not fatigue, but the biting water temperature.

15 hours later, she was numb with cold water. Knowing that she couldn't swim any more, she asked someone to pull her aboard. Her mother and coach are on another boat. They told her that the coast was nearby and told her not to give up. But she looked at the California coast and saw nothing but thick fog. A few minutes later-after she left 15 hours and 55 minutes-people put them on the boat. After a few hours, she gradually felt much warmer, but then she began to feel the blow of failure. She told reporters without thinking: "To be honest, I'm not making excuses for myself. If I had seen Lunan at that time, maybe I could have persisted. " The place where people pulled her aboard was only half a mile from the California coast!

Later, she said that what really made him give up halfway was not fatigue or cold, but because he couldn't see the target in the dense fog. For the first time in my life, Miss chadwick didn't stick it out. Two months later, she successfully swam across the same channel. She is not only the first woman to swim across the Katarinna Strait, but also about two hours faster than the man's record.

Although chadwick is a good swimmer, she also needs to see the goal clearly, so that she can go all out to complete the task that she is capable of completing. Therefore, when we plan our own success, we must never underestimate the importance of setting measurable goals.

Whether there is a goal or not is a watershed for successful people and mediocre people.

In simple mathematical knowledge, the straight line between two points is the shortest. Assuming that you travel at the same speed, if a person sees a clear goal, he will try to go straight like Ken Brunei in the second story and reach his destination soon. If a person can't see the goal, he will wander aimlessly and meander like a Bisell man groping by feeling in the vast desert, and may eventually find himself back to the starting point, or after years of hard work, he has nothing. No matter how old a person is, his real journey in life begins from the day he sets his goals. The old days were just beating around the bush.

Goals are like a watershed, and it is easy to divide people with similar qualifications into a few elites and most mediocre people. The former dominates his own destiny, while the latter drifts with the tide and wastes his life. When a person has made up his mind, there is often nothing that can stop him from reaching his goal. Once you have the desire to succeed, you will have a strong sense of mission and responsibility and fight for it. There is a proverb in the west: take what you want, as long as you pay the corresponding price. A philosopher said, "He who is determined to climb the peak will always find his way." Strong motivation can drive people to overcome many difficulties without pushing themselves. If you still don't know what height you want to reach in life, please write down your goals and work towards the goals in your heart. In this way, you will seize the opportunity of success keenly and reach the ideal situation smoothly.

Only by setting a goal for our own life, the brave, firm, persistent and fearless person in our hearts will come out, and we can stimulate our potential to the greatest extent and better meet all kinds of challenges on the road of life. American singer Mariah Carey has a famous masterpiece "Hero", and the lyrics are very good:

There are heroes in your heart, so don't be afraid of who you are. Explore the depths of the soul, you will find the answer, and the so-called pain will melt away. Then, the hero will come to you with infinite power, let you put aside your fears, be sure that the difficulties will eventually be overcome, find yourself and become strong, and you will find the hero in your heart.

Therefore, we should dare to dream and set challenging goals, so that our potential can be stimulated to the greatest extent, and it is easier to succeed in the future workplace.

In any case, we can't live without goals.

Of course, you will say that although people often say that "where there is a will, there is a way" and "nothing is difficult in the world, but there is a will", the reality is often not the case. Indeed, "what you want to do" and "what you can do" are not the same thing. Everyone's ability, talent and understanding are different. If we set a goal, we may not be able to achieve it 100%. However, if we have no goals, we are unlikely to succeed. Because there is a good saying abroad: If you don't even know where you are going, you are always there.

I can't get there either. There is also an old saying in China: If you want it, you must ask for it; If you want it, you must seek it. Therefore, whether the goals we set can be achieved or not, the goals are of great positive significance to our success.

Of course, besides our own conditions, there are many internal and external factors that affect success, so it is also very important for us to set a reasonable goal. When we have been engaged in something for a long time, but we can't see any progress or hope of success, it may be time for us to reflect. Combine our interests, hobbies, talents, specialties, abilities and conditions to see if we are going the wrong way. If you go wrong, it doesn't matter, then look for another one carefully.

In any case, we can't live without goals, because although our initial goals were wrong, after readjustment, we still have hope of success, just a little late. However, if you and I have never had a goal at all, then our hope of success in the future can only be described as "slim".

Several factors that should be considered when graduates determine their career direction

After years of study, most fresh graduates are finally going to work. When many students are looking for a job after graduation, they often face a problem: when they were freshmen, they failed to learn their favorite major, or after studying professional courses for several years, they found that their original major was not suitable for them, and now they are facing the problem of finding a job after graduation, and they don't know whether to give priority to their major counterparts or re-choose a job that suits them.

In addition, when many students look for jobs after graduation, it often happens that they only consider whether the job and major are suitable, and never consider whether the major they have studied and the job they want to engage in are suitable for them; Or blindly submit job resumes regardless of enterprises, industries and positions; Or in the column of job-seeking intention of job-seeking resume, it is written that many things such as technology, sales and department manager are only for themselves, but they have not given themselves a clear positioning; Some students, under the pressure of employment, signed an employment agreement as soon as they met a company that wanted to hire themselves, regardless of whether the industry and work were suitable for them, perhaps for three to five years at once.

Of course, many times, under the pressure of employment, the above practice is understandable. But at the same time, we should see that all the above practices are blind and incomplete, and we should consider our employment problem from a long-term perspective. If we choose blindly without detailed analysis before looking for a job, then three to five years later, we are likely to find that we are still faced with the dilemma of choice: that is, we continue to do our current job, and we feel that this job is not suitable for us, and even feel that every day's work is boring or painful, and we have not achieved much after working for several years; If you resign and choose another industry or occupation, it is likely to mean giving up some professional knowledge, industry background and interpersonal relationships accumulated now and having to pay a very high "opportunity cost".

In fact, it is more scientific and rational for us to choose a job: before we start looking for a job, we should make a comprehensive understanding and detailed analysis of the outside world and our own situation, then preliminarily determine our career orientation and development direction, and then consciously look for it in the process of looking for a job.

Externally, it is mainly the current overall employment environment and employment trend, the present situation and development prospects of all walks of life, some employment opportunities faced, and their own family environment.

From their own point of view, the main factors of understanding and analysis should include:

1, what do I like to do (mainly including professional interests, professional values, etc. );

2. What am I suitable for (mainly including occupational character, temperament, talent, IQ, EQ, etc.). );

3. What am I good at (mainly including professional ability tendency, such as verbal expression, logical reasoning, numerical operation, etc.). );

4. What can I do (mainly including my professional knowledge, skills and work experience);

Finally, through the comprehensive analysis and balance of the above factors, I initially determine my career orientation and development direction, and consciously look for it according to my career plan in the process of employment. Of course, the basis of "analyzing and weighing" the above factors is our familiarity and understanding of our professional interest, occupational character and ability tendency. If we don't even know what we really like or are suitable to do, then we can use the tool of "career assessment" to further discover and understand our career characteristics and development potential such as career interests and ability tendencies.

At the same time, the above factors are just a few aspects that we should focus on when choosing a job. We can't say which is important and which is not. Everyone's situation is different, and everyone should consider it in combination with their own actual situation. At the same time, it should be noted that we consciously look for the most suitable job when we are employed, which does not mean that we must not do the job that is not suitable for us. The employment ideas of "employment first, then choosing a job" and "survival first, then developing" will have strategic guiding significance for most fresh graduates to find jobs for a long time to come, but we can be more scientific in the process of choosing a job on the premise of ensuring employment.

An example of career planning: planning a road map and achieving big goals in sections.

Based on the knowledge in the previous sections, we have understood the significance of career planning and determining career goals to our lives, as well as several factors that should be considered in determining career goals and career positioning. Then, when we initially determine our career goals and career orientation, the next step is to design a reasonable "career development roadmap" around our career goals and career orientation, and finally realize our career goals.