Deciding Where You Want to Go on Your Job & in Your Career

Before setting any goals or discussing your career plans with the boss, it is important to determine exactly what your job is presently giving you, how well you are handling your current responsibilities, and how much more opportunity you might squeeze out of your present situation.

The following questions should begin your thinking process.

1. What are all the things you do on the job?

2. Which ones are important to the functioning of the department?

3. Which are trivial?

4. Which ones take most of your time?

5. What is the basis on which your performance is judged?

6. How often do you get the opportunity to learn something entirely new?

7. What are your greatest strengths on this job?

8. In what areas of your current job do you need more experience or training?

9. How could that experience or training be accomplished?

10. What have you done in the past year to prepare yourself for more responsibility?

11. How can your boss help you to do a better job?

12. In what way have you shared that information with your boss?

13. Is there anything the organization does that limits your effectiveness?

14. Is there anything your boss does that limits your effectiveness?

15. What specific changes in your job would improve your effectiveness?

16. What's important to you about your job?

17. What critical, unique abilities does your job require?

18. What do you like best and least about your job?

19. How knowledgeable is your boss about your accomplishments?

20. What will be the most important issues facing your department in the coming year?

21. How well are you being prepared to handle those issues?

22. What do you expect to be doing in five years?

23. What are you and the organization doing to prepare you for that?

24. What new job goals do you want for yourself this coming year?

25. What career development goals will you set for yourself?

26. How will you measure your progress in meeting those goals?


Excerpted by permission of the publisher from Skills for Success: A Guide for Secretaries and Administrative Assistants, a self-study published by AMACOM Books. For information on this one and other self-studies from AMA, here.