5 New Year’s Career Resolutions for 2023

New Year’s resolutions are a concept we’re all familiar with, which usually are to exercise more and finally reach a target weight. Don’t worry, the contents of this article don’t involve you having to step foot into a gym. Instead, these 5 resolutions focus on your career and are aimed to provide more purpose in your day-to-day life. As you read this article, I recommend you take each resolution and personalize it.

1. Set career goals

Many people set a plethora of personal goals to achieve during the year. However, not everyone sets career goals to work towards alongside their personal goals. Instead of merely following the typical responsibilities in your job, ask yourself what you can do to improve as an employee or improve the company you work for. Not only will this give you more of a sense of purpose in your job, but it will also show your manager that you are committed to providing more value to the company. When creating these goals, I recommend starting with more general goals and then going into detail on the specifics of what achieving each goal entails. A common technique for successful goal-setting is to create SMART goals, which are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-based. For example, if your overall goal is to be more focused at work, you should specify how you plan to do that. You can further break down this goal by adding that you will start your day by taking 10 minutes to write down all your known tasks and implement the pomodoro technique to break your day into productive, focused time blocks. You can measure progress by the amount of tasks you complete in a day or amount of time spent on your phone/social media for the week. 

2. Start task-tracking

It’s easy to become lost in the day-to-day monotony of your job where the days just blur together until it’s the weekend. When your boss or even a friend asks what you did at work today, you probably have to pause and think “what did I do today” as you try to remember what you did after checking your morning emails. However, task-tracking is going to be your new secret weapon, not only in answering this question, but also in being more productive and prepared for a performance review. On a daily basis, it will be extremely beneficial to write down everything you complete and the details that are involved with them, regardless of how trivial it seems. Did you respond to 5 emails? Write it down. Did you complete a document and send it for review? Write it down. At the end of the week (or end of each day), you can then look at the tasks you completed and reflect on how efficient you were or how it added value. This is especially important for any task or project that can be viewed as an accomplishment because you will now have all the details to add the accomplishment to your resume and LinkedIn.

3. Update your resume quarterly

Some of you may be looking at this resolution and laughing because you haven’t updated your resume in years, not to mention updating it every quarter. If you haven’t updated your resume in years, I highly recommend investing in a professional resume writer now to update it for you. This is because the writer knows how to write an effective ATS-optimized resume, which will then allow you to mimic their bullet format as you update it each quarter. In addition, I recommend updating your resume each quarter because as time goes by, you will forget the details of your accomplishments and responsibilities at work. This is also where task-tracking is extremely beneficial because you can refer to your daily task-tracker or weekly task review and develop them into comprehensive bullets on your resume.

4. Update your LinkedIn

If you don’t have a LinkedIn profile, you can basically think of it as your virtual business card/resume. If you haven’t created one yet, you can do so in a few easy steps.. This article has tips on how to get started. As there are many aspects of LinkedIn, here are examples of some key changes: Update your headshot, update your job role/responsibilities, and ask for recommendations. Besides updating your LinkedIn now, the official 2023 New Year’s Career Resolution should be to continually improve and optimize your LinkedIn throughout the year.

5. Attend more networking events

If you work in a corporate job, it is more than likely that your company hosts networking events or has opportunities to go to other networking events. However, if I had to guess, it is more than likely that you often choose not to go. Regardless of if you work in a corporate job or not, you should make an extra effort to attend more networking events in 2023. Networking is extremely beneficial to professionals in all industries. If you’re unsure how to find networking events to go to, check out this article.

Congratulations, you just completed step one in creating New Year’s career resolutions! Now it is up to you to officially write down what resolutions and career goals you want to accomplish in 2023. As a reminder, you should aim to have SMART resolutions and goals (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-based). In addition, on your timeline for your resolutions and goals, I would set aside time in July to have a mid-year career goals check-in. I wish you all the best of luck and success in achieving your career resolutions in 2023 and advise you to continue to check the BrandResumes blog for useful content to advance your career.