More than half, 56%, of workers are looking for a new job or plan to do so in 2025, according to an October 2024 resume template survey of 1,258 full-time U.S. workers. One in three of them plans to quit their current job, even if no other one is planned.
Whatever your career plans for 2025 — whether you’re looking for a new job, hoping for a promotion, or simply wanting to improve in your current role — there are steps you can take now to make progress.
Here are three tips from Alison Fragale, professor of organizational psychology and author of Likeable Badass, on how to prepare for success in 2025.
Identify your goals
First, think about what you want to accomplish in the new year – or even a few years down the road.
“We want to look into the future and get to a point that we want to get to,” Fragale says, adding that it may be “you’ve created a product or you’ve started a mentorship program.” Example. Whatever you want to include on your resume or what you want to be proud of.
Then you want to work backwards from there and find some actionable steps to do this. In 2025, these steps will help you choose your to-do list, says Fragale. “If not everything is possible, which of these things will most push me to achieve these goals?”
Identify “three to five relationships” to achieve this
Once you’ve figured out what you want to accomplish, identify “three to five relationships that will help you achieve that goal,” says Fragale. These can be people who have developed similar products or held the position you want to achieve, or whoever you think can help you make that progress.
Then, “start thinking about how you can add value to their lives in 2025,” she says. Can you help them with a project they are working on? Can you give a useful introduction? Can you share any new research that is relevant to your work? Helping them first can help your relationship grow into something more substantial that can be reciprocated.
Try to contact them twice a year to maintain these relationships. That way, when you finally get help, you’ll have made that connection and have a natural opportunity to ask questions.
Get comfortable talking about your successes.
Finally, get comfortable talking about your successes, says Fragale.
This could mean sending your boss an email and telling him what you accomplished this week or what your team accomplished. It could mean finding a good answer to the question “How’s work going?” in your personal life, highlighting one or two things you did well.
If your success happens “behind closed doors,” “no one knows about it,” Fragale says, and you can’t reap the benefits.
Just by knowing how to showcase her successes, Fragale has met “some of the people who have become the most meaningful to me professionally,” in places like “an airport bar or my child’s birthday party.”
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