Turbo-charge your career and help plan for future progression and success
Career planning needs careful consideration and it may help to create a personal profile highlighting relevant skills, experience, strengths and weaknesses. These can be matched with aspirations and likely challenges – both now and in the future.
Overview
Career and personal development planning enables people to move from where they are to where they want to be. Career planning is a lifelong process of nurturing, shaping and improving skills, knowledge and expertise, in order to enhance effectiveness and adaptability. Career planning also reduces the likelihood that skills will become out of date or obsolete.
It does not necessarily mean preparing for promotion or advancement, although that might be relevant from time to time. It is much more about improving and being ready for new challenges and changing circumstances. Development planning requires a personal commitment to develop and improve. In particular, this means understanding and accepting constructive criticism, and being willing to take measures to improve performance.
Develop your personal profile
This can be created by considering the following:
• Priorities. What values really matter to you personally? Do you know what sort of leader you want to be? It can also help to reflect back over your career and recollect leaders that you feel were particularly good or especially poor. Why did they succeed or fail?
• Work experience. What positions have you held? When did you succeed, and why? How could your performance have been better?
• Achievements. What have been your greatest achievements? What gave you greatest pleasure and what impressed others?
• Personal attitudes. Assessing how you behave in different situations can help to understand the way you feel and behave: where you are likely to be strong and when you might feel less certain. For example:
§ Are you energized around people or do you prefer to spend time alone? ▪ Do you think quickly or do you tend to take time to reflect first?
§ Do you prefer to do a few things well or pursue many things superficially?
§ Are you an open person or more private?
§ Do you prefer order and structure or do you tend to live spontaneously, remaining open to possibilities?
Assess your future options and plans
The value of a personal profile lies in helping to understand yourself: what you like and dislike; where you succeed and fail; and where you are strong and weak.
There are several key questions that can help support an individual’s career planning and development:
• What are your goals and aspirations? Why are these important?
• What is your timescale for achieving these goals, and what are the key milestones that will need to be achieved?
• Are your development plans in line with the goals you want to pursue?
• What opportunities are available – now and in the foreseeable future?
• How do your skills match with the business strategy?
• What further support do you need?
• How will you ensure success?