Are you working hard on developing your career plan that reflects your ability & skills to the world?
With so many professionals graduating, the job market has become a battlefield, where only those who have the best weapons to beat the competition survive.
And to get where they want, people need to plan for the future.
You are going to or have heard of something called a career path. This strategy is widely used by successful professionals, who aim to direct their growth and achieve goals.
In this post, we list some steps to develop an efficient career plan and become a professional. Are you ready to find out what they are? Then read on!
THE IMPORTANCE OF GOOD PLANNING
Anyone who wants to leave the common place and has the ambition to reach bigger and more stable positions within a company – or even who wants to build a career that makes a difference in the world – needs to have their goals well defined. And with a career plan, this professional can better plan but how to get there? Well, here are some of the effective ways:
Consistent planning, based on your preferences and goals, helps people to:
- Achieve your dreams;
- Discover your skills;
- Reveal the skills they need to develop;
- Save energy and money by investing only in ideas that will work;
- Know how long it will take them to get where they want.
Generally speaking, there are two types of career paths:
The first is the one created within the corporate environments and is essential for the development of a company. It is a program made by the human resources (HR) sector or by the leaders, so that each employee knows what needs to be done to grow in their position, according to their education and skills. For the company, this plan is very efficient, as it helps to retain talent, increases the quality of the services provided and, of course, increases the organization’s profit.
But it is not on this career plan that we will focus on this post, but on the second type: the individual, made not on the vision of leaders, but on your own. In which you create a plan according to what you want.
Have a stable position? A high salary ? A leadership position? Work a few hours and not sacrifice your weekend? Work in an area that already has experience? You choose. And with a career path you will have the right tools to achieve your goal in less time than you think.
Check out these essential steps to develop a career plan right now:
DEVELOP A CAREER PLAN
Understand your personality and preferences
The best way to get where you want is to know exactly what you want. For those who have not yet entered university, it is almost impossible to predict the future or to know what one wants professionally. And lack of experience can be a motivator for wrong decisions.
But the good news is that a career path is not fixed, it never changes. On the contrary, it needs to be adapted throughout your life, according to your experiences, backgrounds and expectations.
The first step in developing this career plan is to define what you would like to do, the type of work that interests you, the hierarchical level, the work environment that you like best and the people you would like to relate to professionally. This can even help you choose the best undergraduate course , if you have not yet joined one.
Creating a scenario with possibilities for the future is a way to predict possible mishaps and start investing in qualification early. Many professionals are unable to develop their careers because they start to worry about the profession when they have completed their undergraduate studies.
To help you with this step, answer a series of questions like:
- What are my strengths and weaknesses?
- Is my personality more introverted or extroverted?
- Do I have defects that can interfere with my professional life?
- What types of activities do I want to perform?
- Do I prefer to take orders or manage my own work pace?
- What environment do I want to work in?
- Do I need to increase my networking?
- How do I want to reconcile my personal and professional life?
- Do I prefer to dedicate myself more to a family or my career?
- How do I imagine my financial life in the future?
- Where do I want to go?
It is essential not to base your answers on assumptions only. Take the time to do market research, read specialized magazines, follow websites and blogs that talk about careers and, if possible, talk to professionals in the field who have already gone through the stage you are in now.
DEVELOP YOUR SKILLS
You may have already noticed how many people get the best opportunities – for having done an exchange or a training course -, while others do not have the chance to show what they know, even with talent and willingness to do the best .
After defining your goals and objectives, and recognizing your strengths and weaknesses, it is time to develop your skills. Qualified people are more likely to get where they want and survive in the face of adversities in the labor market.
Often, students and professionals conform to competition and difficulties and make no effort to grow. And from there, they begin to lean on the economic crisis, the lack of money or the political problems to justify the dreams that they did not realize.
There are also those who choose professions or areas that do not have so many skills and end up facing situations that make it difficult to pass a selection process or receive a promotion. A career path is a way to get ideas off the ground and start pursuing what you want.
When listing your strengths and weaknesses, analyze how they can affect your professional life. For example: most companies, startups and trainee programs require that their professional future have an advanced level in another language, such as English or Spanish.
If you don’t have one, you can start investing in an online course or training, offered for free by many websites. With dedication, you can achieve fluency in less than 2 years.
The most important thing is not to treat your weaknesses as obstacles to getting you where you want to go and neglect your strengths. Good communication, ease of learning, emotional intelligence, proactivity, leadership spirit and the ability to work in groups are some of them. Invest in activities and challenges that help you further develop what you already have.
Here are some of the skills you can develop to become a more qualified professional for the market:
- communication and reading in other languages;
- computer skills;
- good writing;
- knowledge in SEO and SMO;
- notions of image and video editing;
- social media skills.
But, depending on the area in which you want to work, it is possible to learn even more through courses and specializations. We’ll talk a little more about them in the following topics.
DEFINE SHORT TERM & LONG TERM ACTIONS
There is no point in identifying your skills or what you lack professionally and doing nothing to develop those talents. The career plan cannot be based only on the world of ideas, and it must be put into practice.
It can have different durations, according to what the professional thinks is best for you. It can be a long-term one – for those who already have a certain experience, have stability and already know exactly where they want to go – or something in the short term, with more tangible goals – ideal for people who are in the process of changing their careers, who have never have made a plan or have not even started to work yet.
It is at this stage that you will define what your actions should be in order to get what you want. But you must be asking yourself: how to do this?
Let’s use as an example a university student who will graduate in less than 2 years, but has a curriculum without any professional experience. He knows that it will be very difficult to enter the market in this way and that he has not yet put into practice what he has learned in graduation. What should he do now?
The best answer to that question would be “getting an internship “. In this type of work, the student will be able to find out if it is what he really wants to do, what is necessary to become a better professional and, in addition, he will gain an important experience for the curriculum when it is time for graduation.
This action in the short term can turn out to be beneficial in the long term too, after all, it is not uncommon for presidents and directors to start a company as interns.
You should always think about the progress of your actions, it is important to follow 3 steps:
1st stage
Define what skills are needed to achieve your goals.
Example: “I want to work as a leader in a multinational, but I need to be fluent in English”.
2nd stage
Point out your level of knowledge in each of these competencies and how much time you have to develop them. Record the conditions and set a start and end time for what you need to do.
Example: “I am entering university and I have about 2 years to become fluent in English.
3rd stage
Start taking action. This stage does not require many presentations, as this is where you start to change your story and manage to overcome the obstacles that stand in your way.
Example: “I don’t have the time or money to take an English course at that moment, but with my career plan defined, I will start adding the value X, monthly, and I will better organize my activities while I pursue my studies.
In addition to self-assessment, this step requires research:
- about what the labor market demands now;
- about what will be important in the long run;
- about the best options according to your reality.
When you manage to cross each of the things on the list, you will know that the market needs professionals and that it can make a difference in the world.
Happy Success!
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