A Successful Career Needs Long-Term Planning
A career is a path you choose to take you closer to your ideal form of work. It implies training, commitment, success in what you have chosen to do as well as an accompanying sense of personal and financial well-being.
To achieve these benefits, you need a lifetime of career planning, preparation and placement.
Planning requires thinking. The more logical the thinking, the sounder will be the plan.
Two major processes are involved in career planning – the writing of your own career plan and the acquisition of skills that will prepare you for a lifetime of career decision-making. Writing your own career plans involve a 5-step process:
- List and evaluate your skills and values
- Write several reasons why you personally need to plan a career path
- Clearly state your lifetime goals. Then describe those specific goals you wish to accomplish in the near future.
- Identify the ways/actions that you must take to attain your goals
- Evaluate whether you have achieved your stated career goals.
Steps 1 to 4 form your initial planning sheet. You can only act on the fifth step after you have started on a career by returning to your initial planning sheet. Are you achieving your stated goals? If not, you will need to consider modifying them.
The second major process involves the acquisition skills to:
Make career decision. Decisions such as which career? Which route? Which course? What training?
Make a self-assessment. Knowing yourself is just as important as developing effective decision making skills. You need to explore your values, clarify your goals and interest, define your strengths and weaknesses, examine your own personality and be realistic about your abilities.
Gather and assess career information. You need to explore the world of work and gather accurate occupational information in order to narrow your options to a few vacations of your choice. These must then be considered in the light of your work and lifestyle preferences, together with the nature of work, educational and training requirements, salary and fringe benefits, opportunities for advancement, etc.
Values
Integrate information about self and occupation so that you can choose, from the available alternatives, career that fits you. This involves matching your values; interests and abilities with career information gathered so far, your personal plan, family expectations and opinions of friends and teachers.
Market your skills to employers, Having identified the career of your choice, you need to identify and evaluate specific job opportunities. These can be identified through friends, relatives, newspaper advertisement, trade journals or newsletters.