Before you can sit down with your boss to discuss your career goals, you need to take some time to analyze your current situation. Determine exactly what your job is giving you, how well you’re handling your responsibilities, and how much additional opportunity you might squeeze out of your present situation.
Start the process by asking yourself these questions:
- What do you like best and least about your job?
- What are all the tasks involved with your job?
- Which ones are important to the functioning of the department?
- Which are trivial?
- Which tasks take up the most of your time?
- What is the basis on which your performance is judged?
- How often do you get the opportunity to learn something entirely new?
- What are your greatest strengths on this job?
- In what areas of your current job do you need more experience or training?
- How can you get that experience or training?
- What have you done in the past year to prepare yourself for more responsibility?
- How can your boss help you to do a better job?
- In what ways have you shared that information with your boss?
- Are there ways the organization limits your effectiveness?
- Does your boss limit your effectiveness in any way?
- What specific changes in your job would improve your effectiveness?
- What about your job is most important to you?
- What unique abilities does your job require?
- How knowledgeable is your boss about your accomplishments?
- What will be the most important issues facing your department in the coming year?
- How well are you being prepared to handle those issues?
- What do you expect to be doing in five years?
- What are you and the organization doing to prepare you for that?
- What new job goals do you want for yourself this coming year?
- What career development goals will you set for yourself?
- 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, a Division of the American Management Association.
Learn more about AMA’s self-study programs for administrative professionals.