How to Plan Your Career
Dreaming about a bright future and achieving it are two completely different concepts. You need to have a goal in life and work towards achieving it. When someone asks you “what do you want to do in life?”, the answer that comes to mind should be your goal. So you need to have a firm agenda about where you’d like to be in the next few years.
We are capable of doing whatever we wish. We only need to believe in ourselves and keep working harder. Everyone, at least once in their life, goes through a phase where they don’t know what to do in the future. It’s a simple human trait to be confused about things.
This article will help you determine and define your unique career goals, after which you can follow them or modify accordingly. Life is full of surprises and all about sharp turns and twists. But you need to tackle all those problems and continue moving towards your passion and ambitions.
What is Career Planning and Why is it Essential?
A precise definition of career planning is to create a strategy to shape your own or someone else’s future. A career is always an ongoing process and the assessment of one’s progress should be done regularly.
So the importance of career planning include the following:
- It will give you a direction to follow.
- It will make the picture of the future more clear.
- It will make you aware of your strengths and weaknesses.
We sacrifice a large proportion of our life for building a career. So you need to be assured that all the steps taken are precise and that the planning is correct. Few people know exactly what they’d like to do in their life, but many don’t have a clear goal set. So let’s take a look at the steps of career planning.
Career Planning Process
Step 1: Carry out a Personal Assessment
The first step is to know about your inclination towards a particular field. If you’re interested in whatever you’re presently working on, you will be able to perform with more passion. Whereas if you choose a career option which is perhaps not to your liking, your chances of failure increase.
You can carry out a personal SWOT analysis to know about which profession is best for you.
- Get to know about your strengths. You can always build a career in a field where your strengths lie, so work harder to improve your skills.
- Analyze your weaknesses and strive to eliminate them.
- Always be ready to grab any opportunity that comes your way
- Know about the threats that can arise in the field you choose.
You need to ask yourself the following questions whenever you’re trying to choose your career.
- Is the option that I chose where my passion is?
- Am I looking forward to being a part of this domain?
- Do I love spending time doing activities related to my career interests?
- Am I always complaining about the career chosen?
Once you are done with a self-assessment, you can move on to the next step.
Step 2: Research and brainstorm potential job opportunities
Whenever you’re thinking about your unique plans, you need to find out about potential job opportunities. Your skillset should be relevant to your interests and must be developed taking into account the unique job opportunities in your field. You need to ask yourself the following questions while you brainstorm yourself
- What are the career opportunities in the field I’m about to choose?
- What is income I can get if I become a professional in a particular area?
You must consider all your career options thoroughly and analyze your decision in terms of every aspect with the utmost care. You also need to think hard about your Unique Selling Point, or USP, in a given field.
Step 3: Experiment through research, internships, etc.
Now that you’ve decided your choice and what you’d like to do, you need to obtain real-life experiences. You can get such exposure from internships and research pertinent to your field. When you start stepping your foot in the real world, you get to know the difference between academic education and practical implementation.
Say you wish to become a psychiatrist or therapist. You need to inculcate the ability to listen to people talking about their problems every day. If you involve yourself in internships or relevant research work, you will get to know about whether or not you’re able to hear people expressing themselves about their everyday issues.
Step 4: Evaluate the Pros and Cons of Your Options
This advice is useful for any decision that you make in your life. Always make a list of pros and cons of any kind of work you’re doing. List out all the advantages and disadvantages of the option you have chosen and try to compare them to get a result.
The advantages can be as mentioned below:
- Good pay
- Job satisfaction
- Flexible hours
And the disadvantages may comprise of the following:
- The job pays less than what it demands.
- No job satisfaction.
- Absurd work hours.
These are just a few primary examples of the pros and cons of a particular career. You need to study the profile you’re about to apply for thoroughly. Only then can you decide if you’re able to opt for the field.
Step 5: Start searching for Jobs
Once you decide what you want to do and cultivate enough experience through internships and research, it’s time to apply for real jobs. When doing so, you’ll eventually have to appear for an interview. There may be different selection processes for various companies, but all of these fundamentally consists of three main steps:
- Aptitude Test
- Group Discussion
- Personal Interview
Several candidates appear for interviews, who are filtered after the completion of each stage. Only the candidates suitable for the job are shortlisted in the end.
Get a clear understanding of how the procedure happens. If you always prepare for the worst, remember that you can crack any interview.
Step 6: Create Your Career plan
Now, the cumulative of all the pointers given in the steps above may be combined to form a personalized career plan.
Building your career is an essential part of your life. You need to be careful about your choices. But if you follow the steps given above diligently, you can build a fantastic plan and subsequently a great career.