What is Career Planning?
Career planning is in general, defines a model path that your career should take so that your decision in choosing an occupation and organization reaps you the best possible outcome. The most important outlook here is the enhancement in value. Ask yourself this: “If you were hiring for the business you are looking to get into, would you have hired yourself?” If the answer is no, you are going wrong somewhere. How can you enhance your worth in the eyes of your future employer and how van get a better compensation and benefit plan like salary, insurance, paid vacations are the most important career planning question to consider. A career development process is continuous in all aspects and quite volatile. You might identify an important skill to inculcate yourself in. But by the time you have acquired, something more enhanced might be more pertinent. The process is never ending, resulting in the increase in your worth every time.
Definition
“Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life”– Confucius.
Many people have defined career in ways that they interpreted, but nothing summarizes it better than the above statement. There is no set definition, in fact, it should be mentioned that your career will never follow exactly the same path that someone else’s did. For one, requirements and needs evolve all the time. Not only that, no matter who you might have in mind, you are unique. There is probably no one in this world who went through life in exactly the same way as you did. As such, why do you think that you can follow someone else’s planning? Be original, and who knows, you might just go on to be someone everyone looks up to at some time in the future.
What are the three Career Planning Process Steps?
Two career development process might not be the same, but you can always have a general guideline to follow. Let us review these
Identifying personal needs and aspirations
The first step of the career planning process is to ask the question, “Why” you ask? Because what you choose here can lead to you spending the rest of your life in the best possible way, or the worst one. Do not choose something that you cannot imagine yourself doing ten years down the line simply because of pressure from everyone else. If you really want to, you can succeed in any field. Do not let the society tell you otherwise
Identifying career opportunities and developing accordingly
Build your skill set according to the needs that you can see will eventually be needed. Study your field, check the niches which offer good growth rates and go ahead and inculcate the necessary proficiency. Nothing ever goes to waste.
Review and adapt
Set goals; both short and long term ones. Periodic reviews are what set the professionals apart from the amateurs. You can track your career planning process progress by how much you deviate from the goal you set for yourself.
You might not get the best career plan, but remember, it is your own. As long as you decide to stick to it, nothing can keep you from reaching your goal.