If you are pondering your career direction and how to get where you want to be, this article is written for you. You need to do a career development plan to help you determine your goals and the path you need to take to acheive them.
When building a career you need intuition, creativity, flexibility and passion. As a mentor I love nothing more than helping to develop talent. There is no doubts in my mind that career success depends on a person’s personal growth and development. It also depends in a big way on a personal commitment.
As a Mentor, I recently found myself in a situation where I needed to talk to someone about her career choices.
She realized it was time for new challenges and for her to work more strategically to achieve her goals. She had found several opportunities to pursue but was unsure of the path she wanted to take.
Our conversations focused on her Career Development and how she could set out on a career path more aligned to her passion and skillsets.
I love it when somebody takes the time and puts in the effort to grow and develop. She’s not prepared to stand still. Her determination to be the best that she can is such a powerful driving force for her.
Passion may seem a strange word when talking about career, but I guarantee you it’s essential for your personal happiness to be passionate about your career and your job. You do not want to be one of those people who live for the weekends and dread Sunday evenings. Life is too short to not love the work you do. It’s a travesty how many people hate the jobs they do.
It is completely possible to not only find the career that is a perfect for your talents and skills, but one that also inspires you and fuels your desire to succeed.
Regardless of where you are in life and in your career , there is always time to find what you’re truly passionate about and turn that interest and passion into a new career. Just look at me, 47 was when I started online, and have never looked back. It’s never to late!
Once I found a career that I loved I began to love my life so much more so I’d tell everyone not to settle for less and take the time to find their career passion. That is what this lady is doing, and one of the main reasons I have every confidence in her future success.
One of the best tools for clarifying your interests, passions, and career path is to sit down and do a career development plan.
Career development planning can help you take control of your dreams. You need to determine the direction you want to take your life and your work. It will help you to see what opportunities await you.
So, find a place where you can sit down, take a pen and some paper, and start writing up your career development plan, and be creative. You don’t have to respond to all these questions in one sitting… and it might be best, once you have answered all the questions, to take a break before you try to determine what your answers mean for your future.
The only real rule for this exercise is to be honest with yourself.
1
Reflect on your goals
- How do you want to develop professionally?
- What do you want to achieve?
- What are your short-term goals?
- Why do you want to achieve this?
- What’s important to you about this?
- What difference would achieving your objective make to you personally?
- How will you know when you’ve achieved your objective?
- What would success look like for you and your career when you’ve achieved your objective?
- What are your long-term career goals?
- Why do you want to achieve this?
- What’s important to you about this?
- What difference would achieving your objective make to you personally?
- How will you know when you’ve achieved your objective?
- What would success look like for you and your career when you’ve achieved your objective?
2
Assess where you are currently
- Where are you now?
- What are your current skills?
- What are your areas of expertise?
- What are your strengths?
- What to you do well?
- What could you be better at?
- Where do you want to see improvements?
- What skills, knowledge or behaviour do you need to develop in order to achieve your objective?
3
Review your choices
- What do you enjoy doing?
- Which skills / knowledge / behaviours do you want to develop?
- What things can you do to make an impact to your skills and career development straight away?
- Who can help / support / coach or mentor you to enable you to achieve your objectives?
- What training or development is easily accessible to you?
- Which skills / knowledge / behaviours can you develop as part of your current role or part of what you do now?
- Where will you look for additional ways of developing your skills?
- Write down your priority “must haves”
- What are your career goals?
4
Career Moves
- What career path would you choose?
- What do you know about the sector and career path you wish to follow?
- What can you do to research your career options?
- What needs to happen now?
5
Create your action plan
- What individual steps do you need to take to achieve each objective?
- How will you track your progress against each objective?
- What barriers / obstacles might get in your way?
- How will you overcome the barriers / obstacles you have identified?
- How will you celebrate success when you’ve achieved each objective?
6
Your Realistic Target
- What do you want to achievable this quarter, this year, and within 5 years?
Everyone deserves the opportunity to live a life doing work they’re passionate about. Discovering the right career for you will fulfil your life.
Clarity of vision is the key to achieving your dream once you’ve discovered it. Take some time to think about exactly what your dream is, what your dream job would be, how you see yourself doing it, where you are, what you’re surrounded by, who you’re working with, what tools you’re using, the benefits to you and others. Write it down, and try to make it as clear as possible. You should be able to visualize this dream in your head. The more real it seems in your mind, the more likely it is that it will become reality.
Let me end by asking you a powerful question that I believe can empower everyone to find the right answer for themselves:
Where do you want your career to be in five years?
Score Your Way To Good Health - With Our Healthy Lifestyle Plan
Score your way to good health with our healthy lifestyle plan and it's unique 70 point weekly scorecard!
