Importance of Long Term Career planning

There has never been a more appropriate time to consider your long-term career goals and plans.

As a result of uncertainty surrounding the current climate, it may be useful to utilise the time to assess what you would like from your career and plot a route to success.

Setting Goals

Start by taking the time to set yourself goals and understand for yourself what you would like to achieve.

It is important to consider both your professional and personal aspirations. It is not strictly which firm do you want to work for or what level do you want to reach.

You need to factor in what you would like from your personal life too. We encourage you to consider the following –

• Where would you like to live?
• Do you want to relocate or experience working and living in different places?
• What are you plans regarding family?
• Have you considered your work/ life balance?

From a professional standpoint, a clear and defined goal is essential to provide you with a sense of direction and something to work towards.

• Do you want to make Partner?
• What type or size of firm do you aspire to be at?
• Do you want a variety of work and to experience a particular service line or sectors?

Answering these for yourself will allow you to plot and plan your route to achieving your ultimate goal. You can concentrate on setting and working towards objectives.

Plotting Several Moves Ahead

You should work backwards from your goal in terms of the type of role you will need to gain experience in order to achieve your aspirations.

Professionals naturally tend to focus on their next role and only view those opportunities. They become distracted by - 

• How do I get promoted?
• How much will I earn?
• I need to move to this firm

As a result, you can’t see the wood for the trees and make a career move based on what you can see on the surface and things you are going to benefit from immediately.

This may not necessarily help you in the long term.

Remember there are no set, predetermined routes to success. It is not just a case of joining the conveyor belt at a firm, being handed promotions simply by going through the motions and hanging around in a position for long enough.

In order to be in charge of your own destiny, you need to be plotting career moves as steppingstones to success with a view of 2 to 3 moves away. This will allow you to do the following -

• Work towards a promotion within your current firm before looking elsewhere. 
• Build soft and technical skills that are required for you to reach your goal.
• Exposure to broad variety of clients and fellow professionals.
• Experience at different firms or service lines.

This feeds into the need to have an alternative plan and be open to taking a different route to success.

Market Insights

It is important that you keep abreast of what is going on in the market for you to build knowledge and understanding in order for you to make informed decisions on when to make a career move.

Having your eyes and ears open is vital to understand what is going on at particular firms – changes, moves, promotions, culture which will help you to paint a clearer picture for yourself.

Talking to colleagues in the same area as yourself and assessing firms’ opportunities as well as looking at who is moving will be useful to know how fluid a particular service line, firm or office is.

Using this information can help to inform your decision making. It may be that you notice an uptick in new roles and appointments at your level – this could indicate a good time to look at a career move.

Equally, it may be best to stay at your current firm and look to gain more exposure and experience at current firm. This could result in you focusing on a promotion with your current firm which may position you better to make a move further down the line.

Building a relationship with a recruitment consultant that you speak to regularly  for advice and guidance. They will be able to share their own insights and knowledge of firms, markets and regions. Remember – they are in regular contact with accountancy firms, partners and senior decision makers with an understanding of what the landscape looks like.

Investing time in building this long term relationship may present hidden opportunities with firms – you don’t know what firms could be looking for or if a firm is open to creating an opportunity for you.

It is essential to know what firms are looking for and what they find attractive – a recruitment consultant and career advisor will hold the key to that.

Build a quality network

Networking should be about making and building mutually beneficial relationships and viewed as a career skill by both individuals and firms.

A quality network of contacts can help with referrals and introductions, not only for you but also could be useful for your colleagues, clients or other contacts that may need help or advice in a specific area.

Building and developing a network of quality contacts should be viewed as an investment of time, not simply something that you ought to do for the sake of it or because everyone else does.

The main aim of building a network should be to get to know a wide range of people across a broad spectrum of sectors/ roles, even seniority that you can begin to get to know.

A contact should last a career and your relationship with someone grows as you both progresses. It is important that you stay in contact with people and have personal contact details as you don’t know what opportunities may arise as people develop their career.