Page 8 - Resilient-Nursing-Career-12-20-2016a

Creating Your Career Agenda
Your goal in creating a career agenda is to figure out how to use your
current job to position yourself for your next one. Focus on actions that help
you continue to grow professionally and advance in your career, regardless
of what’s happening on a day-to-day basis in your workplace.

The highest-impact areas to focus on:

What do you need to learn, and how will you learn it? Given how quickly
existing skills become outdated, it’s important to keep learning. Figure
out what you need to learn to keep your nursing skills competitive, and
how, where, and when you’ll do that. Does your employer offer in-house
training, support for conference attendance, or tuition reimbursement? Take
advantage of all of it.

How will you build, nurture, and expand your network? Professional
relationships are critical to opening up career opportunities. Part of your
career agenda must target ways to connect: participate in professional
associations, contribute to online communities, reach out to help others in
your network. Make as many connections as you can both on and off the job
(vendors, by the way, can be exceptionally valuable network connections).
Then make sure that you have a personal record all of your network contact
information, rather than just storing this data on your office computer.
What actions will you take to grow your professional brand? Today’s
online tools make it easy to showcase your strengths to the world.
Establishing your professional brand outside of your employer provides an
opportunity for others to learn more about the value you could bring to their
organization and the contributions you’ve made to others’. At an absolute
minimum, make sure you have a robust LinkedIn profile, and are an active
participant in relevant groups.

Can you work with a mentor? A mentor relationship can be formal or
casual, but either way your objective is to find someone you respect who
can help coach you through career decisions. Many organizations have
mentor programs in place; if your employer is one of them, take advantage.
If not, see if you can establish an informal mentoring relationship with
someone you admire within your organization.
What portfolio-building activities can you engage in? Volunteer to lead
a new initiative, participate in a key team effort, learn a new system and
teach your fellow nurses. Part of your agenda will be to keep an eye out for
these types of opportunities, and then step up.

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8 | Transforming Healthcare Through Education TM