What's your career resolution for the new year? Wait, you don't have one?
If you don't have clearly-articulated career goals for the upcoming year, you are in the minority, according to a recent survey of U.S. employees by Robert Half, an employment staffing consulting firm.
The poll found that 68 percent of workers have career resolutions. The other 32 percent are presumably either content in their current jobs or have given up all hope in advancing in their careers. Of course, there may simply be some people who don't link their goals to arbitrary dates on the Gregorian calendar.
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The two most common career goals, both of which were cited by 27 percent of workers, were to develop skills and to get a pay raise. In second place was getting a promotion, a goal voiced by 15 percent of employees.
A fifth of surveyed workers suggested that their goal for the next year was to make a fundamental change. Eleven percent said they hoped to change careers and 10 percent said they wanted to get a new job.
Finally, 10 percent of those surveyed have a goal of expanding their professional network.
Overall, it sounds pretty good for employers. At the very least, nobody's career resolution is to go on strike.
Other polls, however, have shown that many workers' top career goal is to spend less time at working. For instance, an April survey of 1,000 workers around the world by Manpower found that nearly half said their No. 1 career priority was to strike a better work/life balance.
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