Career Development needs to be planned and each step connects to the next to work best →

Career Development Planning

Career development is the process of finding your footing in your professional life. This process involves assessing where you are now compared to where you want to be and creating a plan to get there.

It is the process of wanting a position and developing the skills, knowledge and motivation to eventually pursue it. Sometimes help in planning and gaining the skills comes from within a persons current employment. The first step is to have a written list of goals that are in sync in leading from the short term stepps to achieving the long term goals.

The first step is to know what you want and then to have some evidence that it will be something you could be happy and successful doing. To accomplish that you will need to what the skills and circumstance will consist of if you achieve your goal. The second step will be to start a plan that will lead you to becoming a good fit for the goal you have set.

Start by making a list of what you enjoy doing in a work setting. Then make a list of your skills drawing on all your past experiences. Both of these lists need to be ranking from those you like best or are best at doing on the top of the list down to the least liked and skilled at.

The same approach can be used on other employment factors like salary, commute time, work type like teams or working on your own. When these are ranked with what you want most you will have three lists.

Finding the best career fit involves searching for the jobs that fit the top preferences of each list. If you missing an important skill or criteria then working on those as short term steps will be obivous.

Important Steps in the Process

  1. Believe in Yourself

  2. Never Stop Learning

  3. Sharpen your People Skills

  4. Expand your Network

  5. Find a Mentor

  6. Build your Reputation



When looking for a job look first for the right people then the right job →

Networking works best when you look for the right people.png

"Opportunities do not float like clouds in the sky. They're attached to people. If you're looking for an opportunity, you're looking for a person." – Ben Casnocha.

Job sites, recruitment consultants, CVs / résumés, and Google all have their uses in your career change. But they're not the place to start.

Focus instead on connecting with people.

The power of being in front of people is to present the whole you – something a CV or résumé can't do.

I'm an introvert. So, you won't find me exuberantly working a room at a networking event. But I am comfortable meeting people one-on-one or having phone calls.

So that's what I did – and with a whole set of people whose roles interested me.

It took time. As I explained above, there were many 'dead ends,’ but ultimately, it led me to a role in a field I didn't even know existed.

More than that, this approach meant I avoided the ruthless filtering that happens with conventional job applications.

I wasn't 'qualified' to work in the social start-up I fell in love with. But I had a ton of enthusiasm and a willingness to learn. That was never going to come across on my CV or résumé.

I didn't get the job there through a formal application. I got it because I built relationships with people in the organization. I did some pro-bono work, which led to consultancy work and an interview for a full-time job.

If you're curious, I had the worst interview of my life for that role. I so wanted the job that my brain froze; I stumbled through the questions and left thinking I'd blown it. Catastrophic. Or it might have been, had that been my first interaction with the team. But it wasn't, and I still got the job because of the strengths of the relationships I'd built.

Remember: people first, jobs second.