All about career planning

Do you seek to make out where you stand in your career? Do you want to know where you intend to be in your career? Do you want to know how you can reach that aspired position in your career? A good career plan is one of the most valuable instruments that can help you to get answers to all these questions.

You can do exhaustive career planning by going through the following basic but vital steps:

Self-evaluation:  In order to unearth your aspirations, you should be clear about what you stand for. You can discern this by raising queries with yourself as under:

·   Which pursuits inspire you the most?

·   What are your qualities that stand out the most?

·   What sort of a lifestyle do you seek?

·   What are your plus-points and vulnerabilities that people around you know?

·   What are the prime attributes of the job that you are seeking?

Skills analysis:  Individual penchants apart, the talents that you possess should be the central guiding factor to show you the way forward. You should think over your abilities by seeking answers to the following questions:

·   What are your prime capabilities?

·   How much practical acquaintance do you have?

·   What are your skills that you can utilize effectively on ground?

·   What all attainments do you have to your credit?

·   What are your weak-points that call for improvement?

Compass setting:  Your way forward will be contingent on your preferences, priorities, abilities and experience. Having discerned them, you have to put together your thoughts to find out the field of work that suits you the best. You should come up with answers to the following questions:

·   Which appointments and workplace environments fascinate you the most?

·   How do the above complement your individual likes and dislikes/

·   What are the areas that you need improvement in?

Adherence to a timeframe:  You need to work out a timetable to reach where you want to be. Your objectives should be organized into sub-objectives to facilitate easy achievement. Towards this,  the answers to the following queries should be found:

·   What are your immediate, short-term and long-term objectives?

·   How do you propose to acquire all requisite qualifications and in what timeframe?

·   How can you can widen and establish an influential contact base?

Mid-term corrections:  Having known your objectives and the timeframe in which you intend achieving them, you embark on your career journey. En route, you should look back periodically to discern how much you have traversed; a biannual exercise for this is recommended to help you stay on the correct path and make allowances for any extraneous developments.

You may be prompted to go in for a change of job or career. Such a decision could be impelled by several reasons. You may not have been able to give wings to your passions or that your dream job came to you after a very long wait. The harsh truth however is all along you were not satisfied with your job. You should take the following actions to ensure that your remainder journey remains hassle free:

Ascertain causes:  You must mull over your decision; in case it is based on any of the following, it would be justified:

·   Tedium and intense pressures at work.

·   Lack of adequate opportunities to make full use of your expertise.

·   Absence of supportive actions by the management and growth prospects.

·   Job insecurity and failure to have a work-life balance.

Look at alternatives:  Having inferred the impelling reasons as above, you may find that your grievances can be removed by simply doing straight talk. You may even take a break and rejoin rejuvenated. Moving to take up another or switching to another career ought to be the last option.  

Plan your future:  A shift into a new job or career can be hassle-free and satisfying. But you should be mentally prepared for some delay and that what you start and end up with could be lower; everything will have to be taken in the right spirit.

Career planning entails bringing your future into the present so that you can do something about it in advance. The better your planning is, the more chances you stand to make your dreams come true. Remember that failing to plan means planning to fail.