Importance of Career Planning---mapping our Future

Career means profession, which we want to adopt for earning livelihood, and planning means proper flow or to make proper decisions.
Pre- planning in our life plays very important role in every aspect of life, to work in a proper flow, and pre-planning for career, which we want to pursue in our future ahead after acquiring certain level of degree is also very necessary in today’s competitive world.

According to the Thorndike dictionary

“A goal that you desire to achieve in a selected field or occupation with a well-thought out plan, to get you there is called Career Planning.”

The world is now moving very fast, and the time has come when this meritocratic society accepts only those, having right qualification and right skills.
Olden days are gone, when just a degree would help an individual to get high profile job by giving bribe or using some other mean. Now it’s high time, when the transparency in job recruitment has taken place.

Challenges and competition are the part of today’s society, and therefore, Career Planning is the only task, which can guide us to do what we want to do in our life, rather than just aimlessly changing job all the time in future.

We have seen many Pakistani, who after completing Intermediate don’t know where to go, what to do and we have also seen graduates, who aimlessly do graduation without any specialization. As a result, they earns just in 6-8 figures.

Career Planning is one of the broader aspects of learning in our existence. We all have some intentions and we all think to have stability in our future lives, and for that purpose, CAREER PLANNING serves as a key to success.

Career Planning makes a person to think suitably about their positive and negative aspects. All about their interest, about their creativity becomes possible through proper analyzing ourselves.

Career Planning basically starts, when a person finishes Secondary/ Higher Secondary level of education. After that level, a person could opt for that educational degree, which would help them out to have a good job opportunity according to their skills at the right time.

Career Planning helps us to design and formulate our future smoothly. Like, If a person wants to be a banker, then he or she would choose to go for ACCA or CA or MBA in finance after completing Intermediate in commerce and Graduation in commerce/ business administration.. Else he/ she would go for CAT course or Masters in Commerce or even upto doctorate level.

This pre-planning would be effective and would give him/her benefits after achieving educational targets effectively.
It also helps us to evaluate our own personality, which helps us to know that which kind of job would suit us according to our need and capabilities.

In short, Career Planning is like mapping our future.

Without proper planning, no one could think of getting a desired job in future.

Think what we want to do and finding out more about the kind of training, education, and skills we will need to achieve our career goal is the core objective of career planning.
It help us knowing the nature of the jobs that interest us, such as educational requirements, salary, working conditions, fringe benefits, promotion chances, future prospectus, and help us focusing in the right dimension.

Career planning directs us, motivates us, and helps us to accomplish what we want. A career goal is a specific vision such as an architect or a teacher or a career goal can be a particular field, which we want to work in, such as Media, Education, Medicine, Engineering etc.

For those who will think about their future and career after completing education without any long term desired goals are the one, whose all attempt might end in smoke.
There are some cases and situation, which bound a person to pre-plan in advance, such like family high family business status, lack of interest in studies or traditional job, low motivation, low financial status etc or some past educational traumas, which had made a person to plan after wards.

Career planning is a life time process we are always learning and growing, and as we do, our interests and needs also change. Career planning is not just making plans to obtain our career, but it also help us to make many adjustments there will be along the ways we learn throughout our lives.

Those who have successful careers like educators, business man, manager, pilot, architect, banker, doctor etc are the one, who has made their ways through proper guidance.

No doubt, that our parents have some wishes and expectations from us, but we have our own too. Therefore, we should also consider others opinion. For that we could take guidance from an educational counselor to get better guidance towards new dimensional fields as well. Teacher, professionals, career guidance websites, Head educational consultants can also guide us, to have a better approach for our future.

We must have freedom of speaking and freedom of choosing our career as we have to lead our lives which interest us. We must try to have an open mind in order to choose the right career on right time.

According to one renowned professor,

“Few of us like to opt for those degree courses, which their family or friend has advised them to adopt and this inappropriate knowledge trapped them into a great mistake and
In this way, they are unable to get good job opportunities according to their interests. Only Proper Career Guidance would help an individual to be on the right path before hand. Few of us try to seek the right path and take guidance from family or teacher to tell them what is good for them, which career is in demand and which career suits their interest.”

The future is un-predictable, however, we could still make our place in this meritocratic world by making career goals and plans in advance, for getting better opportunities in todays pluralistic and globalize world.
We must pre-plan our goals under the supervision of professionals in conscious state of mind, so that we could strategically maintain our goals and follow it towards the path of successful future.