Reflecting On Your Career Through 2021

With the end of 2021 fast approaching, it is valuable to reflect on your career throughout the year as to what you achieved, what could have been improved, how this year has improved your career trajectory. Through reflection on the year is commonly discussed whenever a new year approaches, it is important to be mindful in how you approach your reflection.

Through this blog post, we will be looking into how we can effectively set new targets, use them to reflect on our previous year, and correlate the past and future to assist in making the best decision at present.

What Do You Want From 2022?

When considering what you want from the year ahead, it is easy to fall into the trap of saying ‘I want to progress in my career’ or ‘I want to have a better work/life balance’. Whilst these are likely things you would like to accomplish, the goals fall short in that you have no specific or measurable attributes to them. It will therefore be hard to find direction and attain these goals. A better target would be ‘By giving greater focus to my development skills, I want to over achieve my deliverables by 20% in Q1 of 2022 within my contracted working hours, so I can come away from my work more effectively outside of my hours’.

Whether your goal is to improve salary, passion in what you do, progression in your industry, or a change of industry, use the SMART acronym to set your goals for 2022 – SMART, Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timebound.

How Do I Reflect on 2021?

Now that we have our targets for 2022, we can use this to improve our reflection of 2021. We can do this by looking at our future targets and asking ourselves if the trajectory of our career in the past year is putting us on the right path to where we want to get to.

If you feel that you do need a change, good resources to use would be to speak with other industry professionals, recruitment company websites and blogs, partner lists for the industry you are in (i.e. Shopify Partner List, Adobe commerce Partner List), or possibly the best way you can learn about new opportunities is to speak directly with a recruiter that works in your sector. Now you have clear targets, you can effectively discuss what the market has to offer, and work with a recruiter to find the ideal opportunity for you.

The years of 2021 and 2020 have been unique regarding world events, whilst being a tough time for most, it has been character-defining of people and companies alike. You can now reflect on how your company has performed through these times, how supporting the culture has been and how accommodating and adaptable your employer has been.

Aligning all of these points with your goals regarding performance and culture moving forward will allow you to assess whether you are in the right position. If your previous year and future goals don’t align, contact Adapt Talent and we will be happy to discuss what you are looking for and provide relevant opportunities for you moving forward.

At Adapt Talent we specialize in Magento Recruitment and recruitment within the autonomous driving and artificial intelligence industry, we have a range of vacancies currently open with companies ready to hire.