Being successful doesn’t happen overnight, nor is it achieved with luck. Instead, effort, hard work, a good work ethic, and a solid plan are the ingredients of a prosperous future.
Choosing the right career path is an important decision, but it can be challenging to find the time to think about your future. By assessing your strengths and weaknesses, professional goals, and opportunities available in your current organization or another one, you can create a plan that will help you reach the next step in your career path. A career development plan can help you gain the tools and knowledge necessary to move up in your field while also taking control of your future.
1. Identify Your Personality Type
One’s personality type is a broad concept encompassing many theories on human personality. There are several methods of discovering your personality type based on your response to various situations. It s a tool that can help you understand yourself, your interests, and your strengths better. It will allow you to communicate more effectively, improve your weaknesses, and discover new interests that you didn’t know about before.
- The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator: The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator assessment identifies your preference for one of the following cognitive functions: sensing, intuition, thinking, and feeling. This assessment presents 16 personality types.
- The Keirsey Temperament Sorter: Assess your temperament with this quick self-assessment. Just choose the response that most accurately describes your behavior instead of preferences.
- The Jungian Type Index: This self-evaluation is designed to give you insight into your personality and the best careers for you by identifying your distinct preferences.
2. Determine Your Field of Interest
It’s essential to find work that is interesting and that you like doing. Remember, when you want your job, you fall in love with your career and have the motivation to be at your best since you’ll find work more enjoyable.
Determine what you love to do, what your interests are. Choose a career based on what you want. For example, suppose you have an interest in building and construction. In that case, you can go for being a site manager or starting a home construction franchise to enter the home improvement industry.
3. Consider Your Career Path
Everyone has a unique path through which they discover what inspires them. To build a career you love, you should take time to understand yourself, as well as the development paths available to you.
Understand that a career development plan is part of a dynamic process, and your job is to evaluate the various options at your disposal continually. Some people find dual-career ladders intriguing. Others find encore careers befitting their lifestyle. Whatever option you choose, make sure it’s rooted in what you want contentedly from life.
4. Identify Your Goals
To set yourself up for career success, you need to think through what you would like to accomplish over the next ten years, such as becoming VP at a Fortune 500 company or starting your own company. Thinking about what you want to achieve in the long term will allow you to decide and meet those goals.
5. Do a Gap Analysis
A gap analysis will help you determine what position you’re in right now and where you wish to be. When you look for a job, it pays to be prepared. A gap analysis lets you see any gaps in your experience, skills, or credentials for this particular role. You can do a gap analysis by:
- Research on your goal: Research work positions that align with your ambition. Make sure that the job description fits your experiences and skills and aligns with your career goals.
- Consult a professional: Take the time to talk to your supervisor, mentor, and colleagues at work to ask them your specific set of skills that can land you in a higher role. Of course, you won’t tell them that the goal is to land a better-paying job, but you can ask them for professional development that will help you, the team, and the company.
- Determine your qualifications and rate them: Start by assessing the skills, experience, and requirements of the jobs you are interested in to fully understand what you need to do to make yourself a viable candidate.
6. Think SMART
By using the SMART template, you can easily set goals that are within reach. SMART stands for being Smart, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. When you determine your goals and use the SMART strategy, you’re ensuring that it can all be achievable in an estimated given time.
A career development plan is vital in helping you advance and succeed in your career and achieving your goals. Planning your career path will help you stay motivated, productive, and successful.
