It may be overwhelming but career planning is the utmost requirement of the professional life. There is a famous saying that “if you fail to plan, then you plan to fail”; that fits exactly in career planning. It does not matter where you have started, but your growth and achievement depend on the planning effort that you make.
Career Planning may be assumed as a one-time process but that is the most blundered approach one can even make to career planning. It is basically a continuous process of setting the professional goals and figures out the ways to meet those in due course of time. If you are starting with your career planning, then you must ensure that you carry that out in phase manners. There are different phases that should be compiled to have better results.
Phases of Career
Planning
Self-Assessment
There
is no plan unless you understand your need. One needs to understand the
interest areas, strength, weaknesses and the long term goals in order to plan
for the career. This step is the foundation stone of a successful career and
the margin of error is very minimal at this stage.
Research
Once you have figured out your interest areas, strength, weaknesses, and goals, you start the research on those. If you are seeking a Scientist role, then you must research on the job. The qualification required, skillsets the market wants, what successful scientists possess as skillsets for example. This would be helpful to build a blueprint for career planning. The research further fine tune your Self-Assessment layout.
Gap Analysis
Once
you know what is required and what you have, it becomes easier to carry out a
gap analysis. All you have to do is to do a thorough gap analysis to understand
the skills and attributes that need to be acquired to achieve goals. This is
again a very important phase and the margin of deviation from the process is
very minimum.
Review
There
can be various gaps that are identified. However, it is not always possible to
target all the gaps. The review process is thus very important. This is a phase
where you have to scan and optimize the target. You can also prioritize the
skills that are to be acquired. Suppose, you need to fill the gap for
communication along with others. In such cases, communication should be at the
top.
Acquire
This is a very important and continuous process. This is the process to acquire the skills that are required to fill the gap that has been identified in the analysis phase. It can be in terms of academic qualifications, certification, particular skill-acquiring, training or any other things that are missing.
Action
This is the most important and crucial stage of career planning. This is where you work out the plan for successful career development. One puts all the hard work to formulate the plan and here you prepare the action plan just before the execution. It can be obtaining training, enrolling for course, start interactions, build networks and others.
Career
Planning is a continuously evolving process. The plans keep on changing as per
the requirement and stages of the career.
