Career planning challenges

Career selection is akin to undertaking a journey at short notice, particularly if your destination happens to be a new place. Don’t you plan for it, find out more about the place being visited, decide on what you would carry and then arrange for rail or air tickets? When you plan your itinerary, you plan to avoid possible downsides. Likewise, when you do career planning, you foresee hitches and take action to avoid them. When you set out in hunt for a job, you will have to be adept at facing challenges and adroit at certain tasks. In fact, you can structure your job search in many ways, but the essence of it is that you have to be shrewd and well-organized so that you achieve grand outcomes.

Career planning is like mapping your future. The process is not bereft of any challenges. When you do career planning, you will face:

· Challenges of remaining well-organised & systematic: During the course of your job search, you will have several documents and papers for use. They could be copies of your resume; contact details of people; printouts of company profiles and emails; and applications sent by you. In addition, you will have to maintain a ‘things-to-do’ list that will include details of liaison visits to be undertaken and appointments to be kept. You will have to keep all such information safe and readily available; and which is the essence of remaining well-organised and systematic.

· Challenges of keeping tag & remaining alert: You will have to display a high degree of comprehension with regard to things happening around you, particularly those that have the potential of influencing your career choices. If you remain cognizant and responsive to various developments, you will be able to evaluate them for the impact they can have on your career. You will be able to infer upon opportunities that can be thrown open for you and organisational growth prospects. Remember that even a trivial happening can trigger a major activity in your career and hence the need to remain aware needs no emphasis.

· Challenges of being driven & single-minded: This challenge pertains to acquiring information about your own self; it is nothing but a self-evaluation. Your career search is all about getting into a pursuit that will provide you delight and contentment. You can be contented if you put to use your skills and knowhow with pleasure. Contentment is invariably an outcome of success; this proves the point that if you indulge in a work that is pleasurable, you are more likely to be successful. And remaining sharply focussed all along is what will pay you rich dividends. Given the numerous distractions that exist, to remain single-minded and motivated is a challenge by itself.

· Challenges of having a line of action: To have a line of action and adhere to it implies planning for the future in a proactive manner. This is the most rudimentary strategy of any job search and calls for a proactive approach. As is well-known, most good openings are hidden jobs and are obtained through your network. Your line of action should be to obtain leads from others, meet people and take your leads to a logical conclusion. To make your line of action work, you will have to systematise your time well, sift through information from various sources, find out details of different openings and widen your contact base.

· Challenges of projecting your image well: You should be able to portray an excellent picture about yourself – when you present yourself in person, when you submit a document in paper and email forms or when you talk over the telephone. The basics pertain to your CV – how dexterously you draft it. You also need to create an impact during an interview and is something that is a monumental challenge by itself. Your routine conduct also matters in creating a favourable impression. Self-assessment thus is very important in being able to create the desired impact because based on your findings about yourself, you plan to conduct yourself appropriately.        

Various challenges enumerated above call for remaining updated on different issues that impact your career. Therefore, you need to research the employment milieu in detail so that you develop a deep understanding of all related happenings. Your focus should invariably be on discerning the person you are, knowing what you have a penchant for and the skills possessed by you. It is necessary that the information you gather should be collated systematically so that whatever strategy you formulate for getting a job is implemented in the correct manner in keeping with your findings.

Challenges will be there for you to face during your entire professional life. You will always need to increase your self-awareness and self-knowledge; come to grips with change rather than fight it back; and recurrently build and leverage networks. That calls for understanding your responses to challenging situations. You will have to learn new ways of working and let go of old ones. And more importantly, you cannot dispense with your trust in some people to provide you with realistic feedback and advice.