All about career development, planning & management

Career development is a continuing process that necessitates attention and single-mindedness as you embark upon one and make headway in it. In simple terms, it assists you to think over who you are and the position you want to achieve in your career.

To accomplish progress, persist with learning and achieve a drive in your career, it is necessary that you evaluate changing circumstances and the viability of your objectives from time to time. Any failure to do so will make you lead a mechanical life with no contentment whatsoever. Some relatable issues that you ought to query yourself about are:

· The position that you seek to be in: This should be from a year’s time from now as also the endpoint of your career journey. Remember that you cannot achieve any career development unless you set for yourself objectives.

· The degree of contentment being enjoyed: Career development does not imply progressing through the job or line of work that you currently are in. It could well imply switching jobs or careers and even altering situations. For all you know, you want to work in a metro or abroad; you can perhaps start mulling over how to go about finding jobs there. After all, the career that you elect to be in is your choice and the life that you want to lead is your life. Therefore, you need to ponder over this issue today and tomorrow; and even subsequently because your needs and longings may get altered.

· Aspects that you would like to be adept at: If you harbour strong interests in a specific field, it goes without saying that you possess the requisite fortes too. Your aspirations to gain more knowledge about a particular pursuit or skills that go with it will serve as an impelling force in your career. It is up to you to discover your true calling and strengths.

Having found out your responses to the above issues as also other significant aspects of your career, you need to find out ways and means to give them shape. That is what career planning is all about. You will need to figure out a route to reach where you want to be. Making a plan for the purpose would invariably entail the following:

· Finalising actions required to be initiated by you and implemented with due earnestness and resoluteness to make you a contender for the position that you have set your sights on.

· Identifying different qualifications that you need to acquire over a period of time and a schedule for the same.

· Studying the circumstances, experiences and credentials of people who have attained similar positions.

· Spotting different companies and organisations that can offer you opportunities to achieve your objectives.

· Contemplating over your existing contact base and the way it can be further expanded to achieve a sustainable professional network.

· Pinpointing specific steps that you should be taking to move on the preferred course to facilitate attaining the objectives that you have set for yourself.

The objectives that you set for yourself and the methodology for their attainment should be explicit. Since things will never unfold in your life as planned, there will be requirements to re-evaluate them and come out with mid-term corrections. But cataloguing them in your career plan will make them relatively easy to attain on account of the definite shape accorded to them by you. They will also serve to remind you of the steps required to be undertaken to realise your aspirations. 

Career development and career planning go to make what is known as career management. Since you are wholly-solely responsible for your career and its management, you cannot afford to go wrong. No employer will try to ensure that you remain abreast with latest developments and familiar with requisite skills set as also various prerequisites to ensure that you remain constantly employable. A company will generally do so till such time it serves its interests. If it happens that your individual career objectives are not in harmony with the prospects provided by your company, you will have to take complete responsibility to evaluate, widen and shape your actions so that you remain in a forward-moving mode.

There will be several factors – both at your place of work and outside it – that will impact your career. You need to be cognisant of the same. And you can always do so if you manage your career by frequently viewing your development plans, assessing your objectives and finding fresh answers to various issues highlighted above. There will unanticipated impediments that will necessitate finding new ways out. But if you adhere to a career plan, you will nevertheless be moving ahead and skyward if you follow a career plan.