Career Development Goals - Are You Planning To Fail?
Career development goals are a vital part of any plan if you want to further your present job, or break away to another employer or even a different career path. There's an old saying that if you fail to plan you are planning to fail. We call it a truism for a reason...
Because it's true!
At the risk of being blindingly obvious, you absolutely must plan and set goals for each stage of your career. It's not always possible to get all of it sorted out in the finest detail but you have to know where you're going. It's called a career path because it's composed of a number of steps that need to be taken. They're called career development goals because each has to be achieved before the next can be undertaken.
To use a soccer analogy, goals have to be scored before you win!
As true as it is that goals need to be part of any career development plan, there's a lot of myth and nonsense attached to goal setting and achievement. Really it can be broken down fairly easily. A goal is the thing you want (there we go being obvious again), the achievement of it is simply a series of steps. If you don't already know what they are, they're certainly not difficult to work out.
The trick is to set your career development goals at the right level. Wanting to be president and CEO of Microsoft might be a long-term goal but setting it as your only one will likely not get you very far - especially if you don't yet work for them!
So your first goal would be to get a job at Microsoft. Achieving that goal is going to be composed of finding out how to get the job. What skills do you have? What are they hiring for? Is there anything you can do to improve your chances? Are there extra qualifications you need? Those are your first goals. Achieve them and you are ready for the next.
Don't loose sight of the major goal, but set realistic lesser goals on the way there. Take small steps and you have every chance of reaching your target, try it all in one leap and you could end up flat on your face.
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The theory is a good one, work out your career development goals, design a plan to achieve them, put the plan into action. The challenge comes when you try to combine career planning with life - which has a nasty habit of getting in the way!
When you initially define your career development goals they might seem set in stone. You have mapped out your career path and nothing is going to stop you. Then one day something happens, your plans are derailed and suddenly you need to re-evaluate.
If you are working without a clear set of career development goals then what you have is a job. A job is something you get up and do every morning to earn a crust. It's not necessarily something that you dislike, but it certainly isn't a career. A career implies progression and you won't get that without those important goals.
It's an oldie but a goody. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time, of course! You need to look at your career development goals in the same way.
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A well-formulated career development plan has one main purpose and that's to keep your eyes on your career goals. Without a plan you lack focus. You have a vague idea of where you want to go but nothing concrete, nothing to quantify or measure yourself against. Getting your career plan together gives you a "to do" list or, if you prefer, a set up steps to take to climb up your career ladder.
We can talk about how your career development plan should be constructed, how it should allow for possible changes in career path along the way, but what do you actually put into it?
Career training and development might be seen as closely related. In an effort to progress your career you take on additional training. This can be within your company or of your own volition. There are many evening or postal courses that might enhance your existing career prospects or be an avenue towards career change. Either way your additional qualifications do no harm to your future prospects.
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