Raison d'être of a career development plan

People who lack a focus often find themselves in the same position for a long time because they lack the initiative and motivation to seek something better. In your life and career, it is important to always be on a forward-moving mode; towards that you need to have objectives.  A career development plan is a way to set future objectives for making headway in a selected career.  It is an extremely beneficial resource for any individual wanting to grow consciously and purposefully through a particular career path.

Knowing the method of formulating one prompts you to decisively reflect on your current position and state; the place where you want to be; ways and means to reach there; and the process of evaluating your efforts. In case you have no idea of the direction and end-point of your endeavours, you are unlikely to clock any professional growth and in the process, will always be faced with severe dilemmas. Therefore, the need to have a career development plan is inescapable. The why and wherefores of having a career development plan are:

· You need to maintain an upfront advantage: To do well in your career, you need to be in the lead over others. The fact that everything in your life will not always be fine or for that matter like what it happens to be today should be well appreciated by you. Going as per current trends, people stick in a particular job for not more than three or four years and invariably move on to explore better avenues. This implies that if you seek to manage and improve your prospects, there is an inescapable requirement to be continuously changing and being on a winning streak.

· You need to convey appropriate signals to your company: Today, companies are rather keen to know about their staff who are determined to maintain an upward curve or those who are merely unenergetically exhausting its resources. There were times when you could afford to remain camouflaged, but it is no more so presently. When you do career planning and carve out a line of action for development, you are able to steer yourself on the right bearing. Organisations discern this aspect and thus appreciate your willingness and capacity to embrace change and keep pace with it.

· You need to have career objectives to aspire for: With a career development plan in place, you will be able to continuously assess your objectives and be able to discern if you are moving on the correct personal and professional track. In the eventuality of any impromptu happenings, you can always apply mid-term corrections to ensure that you do not go off-course. It is essential that keeping in mind your long-term career objectives, you split them into smaller ones that could be attained piece by piece in short spans of time.

· You need to draft your own route chart: The career development plan that you formulate ought to assist you in envisioning the level you seek to be at in the ensuing five to ten years. To that extent, it has to be precise and well-defined. A list of actions required to be initiated by you for improving your qualifications should be catalogued so that you become more vendible and sought after. Your career development plan can serve to provide you exact bearings to move on and ruminate over essentials. You will thus be able to decide on the precise ways and means of attaining your objectives.

· You need to let go of all rigidity & be adaptable: Most people do not cogitate about the importance of being lithe at work as also in outlook. A career development plan makes you more adjustable. Your objectives once set need not change, but the methodology to attain them can be subject to alteration. You have parameters to operate within and hence can decide on various alternatives available to you and which will always figure in your scheme of things. On the contrary, if you do not have a career development plan, you will simply be doing firefighting.     

Career development is actually an all-time procedure to manage knowledge, work, leisure, and changes in order to move towards an individually resolved and embryonic preferred future. Making a career development plan entails identification of various career possibilities by focussing within to ascertain your prime interests, values, skills, precedence, make-up and various environment issues that are vital for your work satisfaction. You thus decide upon a path that you can embark upon and which is harmony with you and your aspirations.

The significance and meaning of career development varies from person to person. However, it is an important benefactor for your personal happiness and even financial security. If you spare time to set career objectives and an action plan to attain them, you will invariably find that your job responsibilities and compensation will advance securely. But if you ignore it, you will find yourself stuck in dead-end and unfulfilling jobs. Your career development plan will make you aware of various opportunities open to you and how you can best achieve your work objectives.