Some job seekers pay more attention to a strategic career plan, while some create it without a purpose. However, most of us tend to climb the professional ladder without a goal. As a result, we are immersed in the corporate routine and don’t often understand how to take the driver’s seat in our careers.
Being aware of your strengths and skills, and knowing how to polish them, helps you to stay stable, even in the most turbulent times. When you have an intense course, you’ll be less likely to drift in and out of jobs just because they were there.
In this post, we’re going to dive into the process of career planning, explore the professional development plan (PDP), and learn how to acquire the tools to maximize your corporate potential.
Career Planning Stages
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There are five processes critical to career planning:
- Initiation: that’s where you define the motivation for career planning. The initiation phase helps to build a clear vision of your professional future.
- Exploration: during this phase, people explore how to implement their career vision. It includes information interviewing, relational networking, job shadowing, and work experience.
- Decision-making: it helps eliminate uncertainty, the worst enemy of career planning.
- Preparation: the result of this stage is a detailed, concrete plan for goal attainment.
- Implementation: icing on the cake. The final process aims to deliver the final development plan, merging social support and feedback.
Let’s go to the core things you must consider when writing a career plan!
1. Do a SWOT Self-Assessment
It’s a well-known test to find how your personality and skills align with job market demands. To ensure you’ll fit into the corporate environment, self-check the four primary traits: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. You can use them later to create insights for an actionable plan.
Strengths
Your strengths represent the unique value you provide as a person and co-worker. Ask yourself the following questions to identify your strong areas better:
- What makes you better than other people?
- How experienced are you in the current profession?
- What skills and abilities do you have that others don’t?
Weaknesses
When triggering your weaknesses, try to look at yourself from other people’s perspectives because other people tend to notice things about you that you are blind to.
Consider the worst work habits you might have, the activities you avoid doing, or the possible gaps in your education and training. Think of the core areas you need to improve.
Opportunities
Consider the opportunities to expand yourself professionally. Are there any people who might mentor you? Or the new technologies you can learn to get that career promotion?
Think about the challenges you have at your job. You might also take vacation days to refresh your mind and discover hidden possibilities.
Threats
The last point inspires you to think of what might prevent you from reaching your professional ambitions.
To understand what you’re up against, answer the following questions:
- Does the demand for an industry decrease in a poor economy?
- Do you have any significant obstacles at work?
- Do you compete with your colleagues for some projects?
When you’re aware of the SWOT results, you’ll better understand which job is right for you, where you are now, and where you want to be.
2. Identify Improvement Areas
Every professional has room for development. These may be obstacles in your way or new abilities you’d like to add to your skill set. Make a list of the qualities and abilities you’d like to develop, whether through formal schooling, training, work experience, or more independent practice.
Consider your present strong points: the duties and tasks you love performing that make you feel competent and in control. Determine if there are any possibilities to develop those abilities further.
3. Grow a Professional Network
Networking is essential when you want to boost your career. You shouldn’t forget about making contacts both online and offline. Join the related online groups, reach out to people in and out of your industry, and get to know your colleagues better — there are many ways to invite useful people into your life.
4. Make Time-Bound Goals
Be very careful to ensure your ambitions fit into a specific timeframe. This way, you’ll feel motivated to progress on a career ladder.
For example, if you want to become an art director from a five-year perspective, your strategic career plan can look like this:
- One-week goal: pulling together your portfolio
- One-month goal: find a graphic design internship opportunity
- Six-month goal: get your Bachelor of Visual Communications degree
- One-year goal: land the first gig
- Five-year goal: get hired as an art director.
So far, you can add or remove bullets from your plan, but as long as you have it written on the piece of paper, you won’t get lost in career opportunities.
conclusion
Getting hired is one thing; developing as a skilled professional is entirely different. Once you find your spot and a company you’d like to grow in, create a strategic career plan. This will allow you to measure professional ambitions and jumpstart your career.
The steps described in this article are just the first points to give you a fresh start. You need to make the corporate goals time-bound and realistic; you have to know your strong and weak areas, and finally, you must keep your resume and LinkedIn profile updated.
Once you’re all set, you’ll feel the difference. The job opportunities would come across, and you won’t notice how quickly you’ll outgrow yourself in the long run!
