What are the most common career mistakes that young people today are making?originally appeared on Quora: the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world.
Answer by Mike Steib, CEO of XO Group (NYSE:XOXO); author of The Career Manifesto, onQuora:
 I am responsible for the success of hundreds of very talented young people at XO Group, and I wrote a book to help people architect and execute a meaningful career plan called The Career Manifesto. There are two things I believe are critical to an impactful career; not doing them is the most common professional mistake I see young people make.
  1. PURPOSE. What kind of impact do you want to have with your life? How do you want to help others? What do you want to build? How do you want to be remembered? If you are ambitious, you will spend more than half of your waking hours for the next forty or fifty years doing some job or another. If that job is a career rooted in the impact that you want to have with your life, if your efforts are making life better for other people, then you will be motivated, fulfilled, and grateful for your work. If, instead, your job is an effort to gain money or prestige, or is just some path you fell into, you are going to miss out on the chance for true happiness in your work and you are going to struggle to stay motivated and effective. Determine what is meaningful to you in life and make your professional choices accordingly. Make sure the work of your company makes you proud.
  2. PLAN. Think about the most important thing you can do with your career someday; it is likely a role for which you are not ready and not eligible today. A good career plan will guide your personal development and your big career decisions to ensure that you are constantly being challenged and growing in the areas where you need to get better to achieve bigger things. Start with a big career goal -- Senior marketing executive? Important journalist? Successful entrepreneur? Astronaut? -- and work backwards from that goal to inventory all of the skills and experiences you need to do a job like that well. List the roles, responsibilities, projects, study, or other activities you can pursue this year to build out that skill and experience set. That is your career plan. If your career plan says you need to learn to write code, then you create the time and learn to code. If it says you have to learn how to build a great team, then you read the best books on the topic and perhaps volunteer at work to help with recruiting or interviewing first round candidates. Being great at your job and then going the extra mile to develop into the professional you hope to become is how people create an extraordinary career.