By Kyla Nicholson, CHRP

“So, what are your new year’s resolutions for 2012?” Is anyone else tired of this question? You may also be tired of January articles focused on goal setting or sticking to your goals, but these are an annual tradition that we just can’t seem to give up, so here’s another.

A recent survey by Virgin Mobile says that 51 per cent of Canadians will make New Year’s resolutions… and 52 per cent of us will break them within a month.

Interestingly, while many of us spend the majority of our year working hard in our jobs, career related resolutions don’t tend to make the top of the list. The most popular resolutions can generally be lumped into three categories: health and fitness, friends and family connections, and finance. This year, why not make a resolution in support of your career aspirations?

The key is to make a resolution that supports you to pursue your personal career journey and success as you define it. Here are some tips to make a new years resolution for your career that optimizes your opportunity for success.

Know Your End Goal
You’ve probably heard the phrase before – If you don’t know where you want to go you’re never going to get there. Unfortunately, it’s true. This means that to make a meaningful New Year’s resolution for your career you first need to know where you want to go with your career and what you want to get out of a career. This allows you to determine a suitable goal for the year ahead that will ultimately support your career pursuits. Here are some resources to help you with the big picture.

• The BC HRMA Career Path Tool Tour
• The Career Path Tool Step by Step Guide for HR Professionals –  a template from the BC HRMA career path tool
• Career Development Plan Template –  a template from the BC HRMA career path tool

Make it Something You Can Control
While what you really want for 2012 may be to earn more money or get a new job, these aren’t suitable resolution goals. You don’t have control over your salary, the job market, or the hiring committees you may come before. Setting goals like this is setting yourself up for disappointment and potential failure. Set goals that you can control the success of – goals focused on performance rather than an outcome that you can’t control. For example, if you would like to increase your salary, speak to your manager to better understand the areas of performance that you could improve or that are required to transition to roles of increased responsibility, and focus your resolution on building skills that will influence performance in those areas. Alternatively, if you would like to have a new job, you may wish to focus your resolution on building and connecting with your network in a meaningful way so that you are aware of job opportunities as they come up and will have resources to consult for advice during your job search.

Focus on Your Career, Not Your Job
Re-vamping the recruitment process is not a New Years resolution. If this needs to be done and it falls under your areas of responsibility then it’s part of your job. The focus of your New Year’s resolution should be on your career, not your job tasks. For example, if you will be working to re-vamp the recruiting process this year and you know that you don’t have a strong grasp of the use of social media applications in this context, you may resolve to gain and practice your knowledge of key social media applications for HR. This supports you in your current role while also providing you with a skill that you can take with you throughout your career.

A Final Thought
Often times New Year’s resolutions are framed as changes that we need to make to fill a gap in behaviour or correct a behaviour. Framing resolutions in this way can have negative connotations. Change implies we’ve done something wrong and the results are more typically do or die.

The success of your resolution is ultimately up to you so frame your resolution as a learning opportunity. Learning implies that it’s ok to make a few mistakes on the way, as long as you learn from them, and such should be the case in your resolutions for 2012.

Kyla Nicholson, CHRP, is the manager of Professional Development at BC HRMA. Kyla is committed to providing high-quality learning opportunities that build the capabilities and the organizational impact of HR practitioners. She also sits on the editorial committee and writes for PeopleTalk Magazine.