Career Coach: Strategic Career Planning Made Simple for 2025

Welcome to Career Coach, a column for job seekers and employees navigating the ins and outs of finding, landing and succeeding in jobs in the biotech industry. Each month, Carina Clingman, founder of The Collaboratory Career Hub and host of the “Biotech Career Coach” podcast, answers questions from the community. You can email her questions at hello@collaboratorycareerhub.com.

Happy New Year! As we step into 2025, thinking about your career trajectory and setting ambitious goals for the year ahead is natural. In this month’s column, we’ll explore a comprehensive approach to annual career planning that will help you transform these aspirations into achievable milestones. Whether you’re aiming for a promotion, considering a career pivot or simply wanting to be more strategic about your professional development, this framework will provide you with practical tools to map out your journey and keep you accountable.

Because I’m invested in your success, I’ve created a free Notion template to help you complete all of these steps and track your progress! You can grab your copy here.

Last month, I outlined several exercises for wrapping up your year. If you haven’t read that column, I suggest that you do. As mentioned there, a necessary first step in the planning process is reflecting on the past. What went well? What didn’t go according to plan? What did you learn? You’ll want to document your professional milestones, any skills you developed or enhanced, and any challenges you overcame.

I recommended a journaling exercise at the end of that column. As a refresher, the prompt is to write a letter to your future self. In that letter, you’ll congratulate yourself on your outstanding achievements in 2025. Be very specific about those achievements, writing as if they’ve already happened.

Let’s take this one step further and write two additional short letters to your future self. Write one dated Dec. 31, 2028, and another dated Dec. 31, 2030. Now, you have goals for three and five years from now in addition to this year.

Next, you must break down these big goals into their components. Outline the exact professional milestones, skills, areas for improvement and anything else you would need to do to make your aspirational letters become reality.

For example, if you’re congratulating yourself on a hypothetical promotion, what would need to happen to get this promotion? Would you need to develop your leadership skills? Would you need to learn a new lab technique? Jot down anything that comes to mind, and get as granular as possible. Be sure to research and include the time horizon for each component of your master plan. Include things like:

• Professional development goals
• Project milestones
• Learning initiatives

Using this list, brainstorm goals for each quarter of this year—and make them realistic. Career advancement often requires juggling your existing responsibilities alongside professional development activities, but you’re only human, and the number of hours in a day does not change just because you’re setting ambitious goals. The biggest mistake I see in annual planning is starting off very ambitious, not hitting early milestones and then getting discouraged and losing momentum.

One way to set attainable goals is to use the SMART framework. You’ll find many variations on this tool. Still, all share the same attributes, which include being extremely specific, determining how and when you will measure progress and ensuring that all goals are achievable and realistic. SMART stands for:

• Specific: Clearly defined objectives
• Measurable: Quantifiable progress indicators
• Achievable: Realistic and attainable goals
• Relevant: Aligned with career trajectory
• Time-bound: Clear deadlines and milestones

Breaking down your list of larger annual goals into the SMART framework will give you a better chance of meeting your expectations.

Next comes accountability. Creating these SMART goals is more powerful when you share them—and your motivations—with somebody invested in your success. For most of us, this will be our manager or supervisor. For some, this may be a career coach, executive coach or mentor. In any case, there is great power in getting feedback on your goals’ scope and feasibility from someone you trust. It will allow you to further refine these goals and potentially add goals if you’re not aiming high enough.

If you’ve been reading my column regularly, you know I’m a big fan of establishing regular check-ins with your manager or a trusted adviser. I recommend short weekly meetings, with an extended monthly meeting for a deep dive.

The structure of these meetings is simple. You’ll review your progress and achievements since the last meeting, align on quarterly and annual goals and adjust your priorities accordingly. Documenting your progress and achievements also makes your yearly review (see step one) much more manageable. My career development coaching clients often lament that they haven’t regularly tracked their metrics for success, making it very difficult to update their resume or LinkedIn profile—or accurately predict how much they can and will accomplish during a month, quarter or year.

As you begin to execute your plan, here are some tips for staying on track and ensuring your success.

• Create a calendar for your goals, including small and large milestone due dates. Spend time each week planning and time-blocking the most important thing (MIT) that will get you closer to completing your milestone(s). If your job allows, block your calendar so nobody can schedule meetings during that dedicated time.
• Bring more people onto your accountability team—the more, the merrier! Tell the rest of your work team, family and friends about your goals and the steps you’re taking to achieve them. Encourage your support network to share its goals and resolutions with you, because working toward goals and building good habits is contagious.
• Implement systems to ensure you have the time and space to work on your goals. For example, association is a powerful habit-building system you can use to help you dedicate time to work on your goals. Many good habits require no conscious thought, but you can describe them as if/then systems like “If I’m getting out of bed to start my day, then I brush my teeth.” Here are some other examples of associating your new goal-oriented habits with your day:
  
  • If it’s lunchtime, then I read one chapter of my leadership skills book.
  • If it’s a workday, then I will dedicate the first hour to working on my MIT.

Set aside a half day to work through the exercises in this column. I always do my annual planning at my favorite coffee shop—it has fantastic food, excellent drinks and an ambiance that makes me happy. I look forward to this planning ritual because it’s filled with caffeine and infinite possibilities. What will your ritual be?