A person who is doing career planning frequently and is always finding a need to correct the process and do it again is missing some bits of information on what career planning should be all about for them. Experts agree that a person should have periodic reviews of his or her career and make plans accordingly, but they often fail to offer reliable tips for successful career planning. Instead, they just rely on guidelines which may or may not suffice in every individual’s situation. Their use of jargon language makes career planning a dreaded activity by many when it should not. They also make it seem like career planning is just for people who are performing professional service courses when in fact the activity is useful for every person who is working or hopes to work in the future. In this case, working encompasses even the athletes who need to do something to get a salary. Thus, career planning is for everyone. Here are the practical tips for successful career planning.
Dedicate a specific time in the year
You need to account for the previous period as you make plans for the next. An annual career review would be the best thing to have for your career planning. You could have an outlook of the next five years and the following year, while also reviewing developments that took place last year and over the previous five years. Doing this activity every year will give you a fair progress chart of your career.
Include reflection time in the planning
Once you have an annual career planning activity, spare a day or two for reflecting on past performance and future aspirations. Try to place the reflection period in between the review and planning stages of your career schedule activity.
Do an audit of skills
You need to look beyond your current job and instead look at your skills and their market value. Remember that you might have skills that are capable of generating high market value when natured appropriately. Such capabilities include entrepreneurship. Thus, while you evaluate your skills, have a category that shows their potential value and their current value. The present value will show you the level of returns you are currently getting for a particular skill. The skills audit can help you shift your job and organization focus to find something that will be most rewarding in your case.
Always consider your values
In professional circles, human resource manager considers the employee’s personal-job fit to motivate them. The personal-job fit is a reflection of how much a person’s values align with the organization’s tradition and strategy as well as working environment. Essentially, you need to be working at a job that you love. You may not find the job easy and fun, but if the people working with you and the environment at work help you to meet your objectives, then you would likely cherish the job compared to other opportunities. Thus, you need to be considering personal values and possibly rank them so that you know what to focus on when picking a job or changing employers.
After going through these career tips, you are now ready for a productive career planning activity. Ensure that you customize any endeavor to fit your needs. Focus on both the past and the future, then reflect on the present and all will turn out fine.