Abstract:
Career planning is a process for:
- Identifying what you are good at
- Knowing how your skills, talents, values, and interests translate into possible jobs or careers
- Matching your skills, etc. to existing jobs or careers
- Matching your career goals to your financial needs
- Matching your career goals to your educational needs
- Making good decisions for yourself
- Finding ways to meet your educational and financial needs on your schedule
It is important to understand how your individual cultural context influences your worldview. Each of us has an individual worldview composing our attitudes, values, opinions, and beliefs about how things work in the world.
Your Cultural Context surrounds the entire career planning process, and includes your cultural heritage and life experiences.
Career is not static and pays when you have a plan to check. If you have a career plan, it will be essential for your career success. Look at the most successful people in their careers, such as Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Ferriss, and Jeff Bezos. All these people have a working plan that helped them with their success.
Keywords:
Career Planning, Future Endeavour, Success, Placements, Opportunity
Learning Outcomes:
After undergoing this article you will be able to understand the following points:
1. What's career planning?
2. Why it's important?
3. What's the objectives of career planning?
4. What's the elements of career planning?
5. What's the steps of career planning?
6. What's the emerging tools for career planning?
7. Do's and Don'ts of career planning
8. What's the advantages of career planning?
9. What's the limitations of career planning?
10. Some best career routes
11. Conclusions
12. FAQs
References
1. What's career planning?
Career planning refers to the process of planning career choices, establishing career objectives and deciding on educational and developmental programs to improve the skills required to achieve career objectives.
2. Why career planning important?
A successful career doesn’t typically happen by chance. In order to build one and get all the benefits that come from it, you need to spend some time reflecting on what you want and how you will get there—that’s exactly what career planning does for you.
But, why is career planning so important?
Here are the answers:
Career planning ...
outlines a roadmap to your future
identifies gaps you need to fill
provides space for ongoing personal reflection
much-needed motivation and guidance
make strategic decisions
reduce the temptation of derailing distractions
ensure you acquire the necessary skills
Hence, When you have some idea of your destination, you’re better equipped to make the right decisions that will lead you there. You can assess opportunities based on whether they’re going to benefit your long-term objectives, which can help you to make smarter decisions.
3. What's the objectives of career planning?
The major objectives of career planning are as follows:
1. To identify positive characteristics of the employees.
2. To develop awareness about each employee’s uniqueness.
3. To respect feelings of other employees.
4. To attract talented employees to the organization.
5. To train employees towards team-building skills.
6. To create healthy ways of dealing with conflicts, emotions, and stress.
4. What's the elements of career planning?
The Career Planning Process Itself Has Three Main Components:
Self-exploration is the process of examining your:
- Skills
- Values
- Experience
- Interests
- Education
Occupational Exploration includes activities such as:
- Researching occupational and job profiles
- Conducting informational interviews
- Attending career and job fairs
- Gathering labor-market information
5. What's the steps of career planning?
The Steps for Career Planning are the following
Step 1: Explore Career Options. After identifying what interests are matching your abilities, you can choose a couple of career options to explore. Career exploration is necessary to determine which career path will give you achievement and satisfaction in the long run.
Building a list of careers is also a backup career plan in case your first choice doesn’t work out. When looking at careers, remember to think long-term. We live in a world where the fast pace of technology is producing
new career opportunities all the time, and also where previously attractive careers are no longer viable.
Ways to explore career paths:
Desktop research:
looking at what’s out there is a quick and easy way to get a feel for the range of jobs available. Understanding job opportunity trends is really important in planning career development. Desktop research also gives you wide access to informational tips and tricks on how to land your dream career.
Career fairs:
attending career fairs allows you to meet employers. You can also meet others who have the same interests, and exchange information to help you reach your goals. It’s even easier with virtual career fairs, like the ones offered to Nexford learners by Localized.
Internships: if you are a fresh graduate, you may decide to apply for an internship to get experience in a career you’re interested in. It will help you get a behind-the-scenes idea of what the job entails and develop relevant experience.
Career advisors: if you’re having trouble in career decision-making, you may ask for the help to help you identify which career suits your personality and skills.
Step 2: Conduct Field Research.
Finding career information include:
- Watch career videos.
- Read interviews about specific careers.
- Attend career fairs or networking events related to a specific career cluster.
- Visit a worksite or intern in a position.
- Look through detailed career profiles.
- Find high-demand jobs.
- Step 3: Determine Your Job Target.
- Step 4: Build Your Credentials and Resume.
- Step 5: Prepare for Your Job Search.
- Step 6: Launch Your Job Search.
6. What's the emerging tools for career planning?
Making good use of popular career planning tools can mean the difference between finding a new career with job security that offers advancement and deciding on a career that has no room for growth in the job market. Many career planning tools can be found online, and they can facilitate the decision to find or change a career.
Tools for Career Planning used prominently
| Experiential Research | Internships, volunteering, apprenticeships, work-study programs, temp jobs, job shadowing |
| Career Search Options | Job fairs, employment agencies, online job boards, networking, informational interviews |
| Career Considerations | Personal interest, required skills, necessary value, personality fit, educational background, advancement opportunity |
| Other Resources | Online webinars, personality tests, classes at local public libraries |
Career planning tools range in type and cost. Some are independent while others require the assistance of a counselor. Some are free while others cost money.
Use these career planning tools to help you find the best career for you:
SWOT analysis
Career testing
Self-assessment
Research
Community resources
Personality tests
Career planning process
Among them SWOT analysis is highly preferred. Nowadays many software are in use forcareer planning.
Top 10 Free Career Management Software are
Lattice
Leapsome
Juno Journey
OneRange
Workhuman Social Recognition Mesh
Learn Amp Fuel50
Heartpace
Digno
7. Do's and Don'ts of career planning
There are so many career dos and don’ts that we can take away from everyone’s favourite, but here’s our shortlist meticulously done to make you understand.
Do try to understand yourself:
Career-wise, what role do you think suits you best? Analyze what type of personality you have, and think about your skills and strengths. From there, you can narrow down the industries and roles you might be interested in, and start listing your goals.
Don’t do something to satisfy others:
At the start of your career, you might feel pressured to choose a certain career path to satisfy your family and close ones. Instead of focusing on what others think, take a healthy decision that will ignite your passion, and help you succeed in an environment that you are most comfortable in.
Do your best to create a realistic timeline:
Once you’ve set your short-term goals, you should work on a timeline to ensure that you are on the right path to fulfilling those goals. Think about the who/where/what/how of every goal to get an idea of how much time and effort is needed to reach an ideal situation.
Don’t ignore your mid and long-term goals:
You might be tempted to give more attention to tasks that will satisfy you in the short-term. Which is why setting clear long-term goals will help boost your energy and keep you motivated. To some, this might be difficult, but the trick is to consider how your personal attributes can be put to best use, and how you can develop them to realise your full executive potential.
Don’t lie on your CV
Lying on your CV can severely damage your career before it even begins. It is important to be honest when applying for jobs, even if you feel that you lack the experience and qualifications you desperately want.
Do be prepared to work your way up from the bottom
Fear and Self Worth, Courage honesty loyalty.. and be true to yourself always . And the excitement too and willingness to learn and grow with the company.
That's what you should possess as you go through your career in life but you must be true to yourself if you're not happy switch positions go to different job change your career but don't stay where you're not happy because it doesn't help the employer or you don't go anywhere where you're just going to put in your 8 hours.
Do Take advice from well-wishers
DO involve your managers or executives in the process of building your career strategy. By doing this, you create a win-win situation.
Don't overlook the power of goal alignment.
Alignment brings balance and harmony, and fosters collaboration. You should not be working for your manger, but rather, with your manager.
Do take Ownership of career development
DO take ownership of your career development and become the CEO of your career.
Do Be optimistic
Optimism breeds success. It helps you to have your sanity intact, flourish your decision making ability and will to overcome all problems.
Do Work on your skills
Even the inborn talent needs grooming and shaping. One must always work on enhancing your skill set which can be as simple as speaking a language, writing skills, singing, sports etc. This is a sort of practice that takes you towards professionalism. In order to improve your skills you may either learn it yourself with practice or hire a tutor.
Always Be informed
It is often said there is nothing like "Having extra information or Being Over informed". Every sort of information you gain is like a value added package. This enables you to take better decisions and make remarkable choices.
8. What's the advantages of career planning?
Advantages of Career Planning:
1. Career planning ensures a constant supply of promotable employees.
2. It helps in improving the loyalty of employees.
3. Career planning encourages an employee’s growth and development.
4. It discourages the negative attitude of superiors who are interested in suppressing the growth of the subordinates.
5. It ensures that senior management knows about the calibre and capacity of the employees who can move upwards.
6. It can always create a team of employees prepared enough to meet any contingency.
7. Career planning reduces labour turnover.
8. Every organization prepares succession planning towards which career planning is the first step.
9. What's the limitations of career planning?
Limitations of Career Planning
Though career planning helps an organization in numerous ways, it has a few limitations that undermine the importance and relevance of career planning.
These arc:
Time Factor
Career planning is usually a long-term and time-consuming process. It is based on the logic of suffering short-term pain to get long-term gains. However, organizations may not be ready to spend a lot of time and resources on a process that would prove beneficial only in the long term.
Unsuitable for Large Workforce,
It may not be possible for organizations with a large workforce to develop individual career plans breach and every employee of the organizat ion. This is because the career plan process requires an in-depth analysis of each employee's strengths and weaknesses on a sustained basis.
Lack of Objectivity
Only those organizations which believe in strict observance of objectivity in promotion and transfers can succeed in career planning. In contrast, favouritism and nepotism in promotions often make career planning an unsuccessful exercise.
External Interventions
Government rules and regulations can also affect the Greer planning options of an organization. For example, the government may make it mandatory for the organization to adopt reservations in promotions, especially iUl is a government organization or a public sector enterprise.
Lack of Knowledge and Awareness
Career planning by an employee is essentially a self-management process. It requires the employees to be aware of the basics of career planning and management activities. However, the employees at the lower levels of the organizational hierarchy may not be familiar with the career planning process.
Lack of Flexibility
Many organizations treat career planning as a ritualistic, rigid exercise. They often fail to consider the uncertainties caused to the career planning activities by the changes in the situation. In fact, the absence of dynamic career planning programmes may limit the applicability of the career plans in uncertain and changing situations.
Difficulty in Measuring Career Success
Since career success is an abstract concept, it is interpreted differently by different persons. Some may consider a good performance in the job as career success. Others may consider the quality of life as an indicator of career success. Still others may consider the vertical mobility in the organizational structure as career success. This divergence of opinions may cause confusion and vagueness in interpreting career success.
10. Some best career routes examples
The best careers are mainly in the healthcare and technology fields. In fact, the top 10 careers are all in these two fields. Dentist, Nurse, Pharmacist, Physician, Physical Therapist, Dental Hygienist for healthcare and Systems Analyst, Database Admin, and Software Developer and Web Developers
The best careers are mainly in the healthcare and technology fields. In fact, the top 10 careers are all in these two fields. Dentist, Nurse, Pharmacist, Physician, Physical Therapist, Dental Hygienist for healthcare and Systems Analyst, Database Admin, and Software Developer and Web Developer for technology.
11. Career Planning: Conclusions
It can be summarised that Career planning is a process that focuses on matching individuals' interests, strengths, and ambitions with the job.
The method includes determining where one is, desired destination, gap analysis, and making the plan.
The process of career planning helps the individual to be aware of various career opportunities. Life as we see every day has become fast paced and highly competitive, having a career plan will give you clarity when selecting the right profession for you and also help you set your priorities right.
Plan Well
Having a clear idea about where you want to be within a few years can provide you with the needed motivation to get there, and it can also help you understand the steps you need to take to achieve your long-term goals gradually.
12. FAQs on career planning
Q. How effective is career planning?
Ans. The process of career planning helps the individual to be aware of various career opportunities. Life as we see every day has become fast paced and highly competitive, having a career plan will give you clarity when selecting the right profession for you and also help you set your priorities right.
Q. What affects career planning?
Ans. The most important things are job description, required skills and education, salary, career outlook. But there are many other meaningful factors that can influence someone's career choice. In this article, we discuss some of these career factors.
Q. What is an aptitude profile, and why is it helpful to know mine?
Ans. An aptitude profile refers to the unique relationship of one aptitude to another. While the implications of each ability is significant in understanding your top talents, the profile provides your consultant a snapshot of what types of work tasks, and therefore occupational choices, incorporate your full range of abilities. This results in a competitive advantage and the greatest potential for satisfaction.
References
1. Encyclopedia of Career Development
Call Number: ILR Library Reference HF 5381 .E517 2006
Edited by Jeffrey H. Greenhaus, Gerard A. Callanan. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2006.
2. The Encyclopedia of Careers and Vocational Guidance
Call Number: Olin Stacks Oversize HF 5381 .E52 2011 +
15th edition. 5 volumes.
New York: Fergusons, 2011.
3. Kennedy, J. L. 2000. Job Interviews for Dummies, 2nd ed. New York: Hungry Minds.
4. Lucht, J. 2004. Rites of Passage at $100,000 to $1 Million+. New York: Viceroy Press.
5. Stafford, D. and Moritza, D. 2004. Pp. 219-236 in 1000 Best Job Hunting Secrets. Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks.
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