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

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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 person's current employment. The first step is to have a written list of goals that are in sync in leading from the short-term steps to achieving the long-term goals.

The first step is to know what you want and then have some evidence that it will be something you could be happy and successful doing. To accomplish that, you must figure out what skills and circumstances will be needed if you achieve your goal. The second step will be to start a plan that will make you a good fit for your goal.

Start by listing what you enjoy doing in a work setting. Then, list your skills by drawing on all your past experiences. These lists need to be ranked from those you like best or are best at doing on the top to the least liked and skilled at.

The same approach can be used for other employment factors like salary, commute time, and work type, such as teams or working alone. When these are ranked with what you want most,t you will have three lists.

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

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

Who should be in your professional network? →

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The desire to connect with people who are important to you runs deep, even beyond the living. This explains why genealogy is one of the top two hobbies in the United States after gardening. Connecting and organizing our living connections should be at least as important, but formalizing the findings is too often just not done.

Having a list of contacts, especially professional ones, becomes critical when it becomes time to look for a new job, and for almost every worker, that time comes more often than expected.  People no longer work for one company for their whole career, retiring after 50 years with a pension and a gold watch. The US Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics says that an individual may change jobs 12 times in their career.

The impact of the Pandemic is going to be a tipping point in how searching for a job will be in the future, and the past statistics will not do justice to what the average worker will face in coming years. Currently, 85% of jobs are found through networking, so it seems clear that if not now, eventually, the process of developing and making a list of names for a professional network will need to be done.

Forward-thinking employees will keep track of their coworkers, supervisors, senior managers, industry leaders, and people who have made an impression on them all through their careers. We can find these names and contacts easily in our address books, and day planners in most cases. Once we have a written list, we should actively decide who we want to invest in to build a long-term relationship categorize the list to the top, middle, and lower tiers and then focus on developing those relationships. You'll need to work to establish yourself as a good contact as well.

The top category will be your most influential group, maybe your top 10. These are people we contact consistently a few times a year, in person, by email, or in other ways. When we invest in them, we ensure we are not forgotten because we pay it forward by being a good contact for them.  Co-workers, supervisors, customers, suppliers, and competitors are key names for your Professional Network.

As we go through the day, when some interesting fact or observation comes to our attention that makes us think of one of these contacts, we can email or call them. Following up and reaching out reminds your professional contact of you and your skills. Ask about them when you do this and commit to your professional relationship investment. Be a contact worth having for those you value.

Acquaintances and Friends can be in the second group of prioritized contacts. Some from this group may even be on the Christmas Card list. They are important contacts maintained at a different level from the top 10 or 20 groups.  This list could include past and present family, friends, neighbors, church friends, and coworkers.

Unless you are at the entry-level of your work, then your career value is related to your past work experience. If you are busy wishing you could start your career in a different direction, you are likely in for some disappointments. The work-related network contacts will be able to see you best about what you have done.

Pick people for your contact lists who inspire you and whom you admire. Even in a professional network where we have chosen the people we want to stay in touch with over the years, it is possible to have unhealthy relationships that hurt us. Our lives are happier, healthier, and even longer when we have close, solid, and positive relationships. Pick people you have learned from, and when reaching out to those on your lists or anyone, be positive and don’t invite negativity. Everyone who you receive contact from deserves a thank you and some feedback. Some first-time contacts will be ones you will want to add to your permanent professional network.

Face-to-face old-fashioned networking is better than emails. If you genuinely like people and the feeling comes naturally to you, then you already know how to network and are most likely already a part of a network. Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie, written back in October 1936, included a list of “Six Ways to Make People Like You.” He states that becoming genuinely interested in other people is the key: “You can make more friends in two months by being interested in them than in two years by making them interested in you.”

In addition, while being interested in others is important, you ought to value and treasure those relationships. If you believe, as I do, that the only thing you will take with you or at least have at the end of your life is your knowledge and relationships, then it will be easy. Carnegie’s other five suggestions were to smile, remember the person’s name, be a good listener, talk about the other person’s interests, and make the other person feel important. When we are both good listeners and genuinely like people, others will respond better to us.

Sooner or late, we will need to reach out to our professional network, and these thoughts are not intended to suggest that the process is a manipulation. Trust will not exist if your motives are suspect and not sincere. If you don’t really value the relationships your contacts with them can backfire on you instead.

Everyone we meet is part of our life network. Still, the professional networking I refer to here includes those we turn to when we change jobs or seek information about our professional interests.

Click below for Top12 best Network Contacts

Maintaining a Positive Career Direction Matters →

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Your career direction is a strategic decision that sets the direction  of your career path. Picking a predetermined direction requires that you have a plan and a goal for your future as opposed to accepting relatively random jobs that aren't building to anything. The goal can change over time and it is an ongoing process.

Preparing for and set your career path steps

Set small goals regularly & keep track of what you have accomplished.

Be sure some of your goals stretch yourself

Get feedback on how your doing

Be curious & ask questions about your industry

Read

Build you Network

Get a mentor

Own you career path but look ahead at what might be coming →

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Perhaps you see a hill coming in your career path and don’t know what will happen next? It could be a job change? Today facing job changes is a matter of if you will but when you will.

Use LinkedIn to search for options and ideas and if you have a job that is the time to start. Employers are checking you out.

In todays world some employers cut whole departments at the same time while expanding others. A trained, long-time loyal employee is let go and often at the same time, a new untrained and unproven staff is hired for another new department. The longer some departments exist the more likely it is that the department, along with its employees, have become dated and not up to speed with the fast-moving technology that will replace them.

What has changed is that employers don’t see their employees as lifelong commitments and they don’t continue to invest in them or build on what they have achieved as much as they did in the past.

The best companies say they value each employee, but is that enough?

You must understand your career direction and take the initiative to get the training and experience for the next steps. Keep your ears open and build on your network while you’re still working. Be active on your network with give and take. Start out early in your career and build and maintain your network.

Connect and network with those people who have the jobs you would like and study them. What was their career path? LinkedIn will show you the career history of those you want to learn from: do a little research and see the payoff.

The years ahead are shifting where an employee has more responsibility for continued employment and in addition, more advancement to the employee.