Strategies to boost your career development

Career management is not something that you should just talk about; you must do it if you want to delight in your work and have a successful career. And that is possible only if you plan and work to acquire new dexterities and competencies.

Your career advancement will always take place if you take initiative. Amongst other actions, you could well job shadow others to gain knowledge about different jobs. Your experience will widen tremendously if you explore lateral movements and take active part in learning and development projects. If at all you have a mentor, somebody from a department that is on your exploration list will stand you in good stead.

Successful and contented people invariably try find out whatever they seek from their work. Once their sights are set on their objectives, they formulate a line of action to accomplish them. The plan should have timelines built in for accomplishing the objectives.  If you incorporate your boss in the process, the advantages will be in your favour because there will be someone within the organisation to help you out with your career management. Remember that sans a plan, you will be directionless and have no criterion against which you can measure your progress.

The modern day workplace is ever evolving and highly demanding; and to cope with pressures that are inherent to it, you need to make a strategic career management plan. None of the employers do you any favour by hiring you. In fact, they will always attract, recruit and retain employees who provide he best value and have the potential to provide the maximum value. If that be so, you ought to regard yourself as a business with something to sell. In other words, you need to generate strategies to sell yourself in general and your value in particular. You should:

• Have a frank discussion with your manager about your career objectives and seek his assistance to jointly generate a career development plan. Remember that the most consequential opportunity to exert sway and bring to bear effect is by involving your boss in various actions or steps required to be taken in your career planning.
• Probe into different qualitative requirements related to skills and experience as pertinent to the immediate and distant future. To illustrate the point, if your aim is to be the head of the human resources department of a company, then you should have a clear picture of the qualifications without which you will not be able to reach that position. And more importantly, you will have develop interim career development plans that will contribute to the accomplishment of your ultimate career objective.
• Increase your awareness about varied career options available to you. This can be made possible if you interact with your boss periodically and also have regular meetings with your friends, both at the workplace and outside. Your aim ought to be to gather maximum information so that you are able to make sound career decisions. You should have no apprehensions in approaching people because more often than not, they would be more than willing to tell you how they moved up in their careers and offer honest advice to you on how to do so.
• Display willingness to shoulder additional responsibilities voluntarily and take on challenging tasks. One good way to do well in your career is by keeping your wits about, looking for areas that are neglected in your organisation or where there are problems and come up with a line of action to set things right. When you undertake to bring about an improvement, you will get noticed and acknowledged by your management; in the process you will also get an opportunity to improve upon your skills-set.
• Interact with the HR department regularly to find out about new career development opportunities or policies that could facilitate them. It is necessary that you make optimum use of various learning & development events and amenities offered. You should be on a proactive mode as far as improving your skills and knowledge is concerned. In this way, besides improving your career prospects, you will also make yourself indispensable and thus be in a better position to accomplish your career objectives.

It is alright to have a job, but if you create a career out of it,  you stand to generate more opportunities for being successful. Remember that a successful career happens only if you work for it. And working for it implies planning, toil and periodic reviews to ensure that you are on track.