All About The Career Planning Strategies
Career planning is the most under-emphasized tool in the world of success. People feel that it’s useless to plan for a career because the economy is volatile and an individual has very little or almost no control over his/her career. But if you know how to plan rightly, you would understand that it’s foolish not to go through career planning.
Career Planning Strategies
Most people don’t plan. They wish. They desire. When they’re exposed to planning, we hear a big ‘no’. Why? Because planning is hard work and it takes a lot of a person. No matter what area you would like to improve, the first step is planning. In your career, if you feel stuck and you’re not able to create the results you would like to create, simply invest your time and effort in career planning.
Before going into what steps would be useful to plan your career successfully, let’s look at few reasons why it’s utmost important that you do the career planning and invest the required time, effort and if needed money.
- Career planning puts you in a driver seat. Instead of letting your company or the boss control your future career prospects, you decide what you would like to do with your career.
- Career planning helps you to get out of your default mode of who you can be and actually puts the career planning tools in your hands to say – Here everything you need. Go, make yourself count.
- career planning strategies help you prevent any risk you may face in your upcoming future and lets you see the obstacles in your career.
- Career planning also lets you learn what you can be if you know who you are as a person and how you can grow.
- It’s a tool that makes you the man/woman you would like to be (by helping you set goals) and not to be the person by the whims of your company/boss.
- Finally, career planning is a master plan for your entire career. It’s a map for you to decide at which point you should make the move to a different destination.
If you are still not convinced, you need to know the steps. While going through the steps you would see how transformative this whole exercise is. If you’re curious, just take a pad and pen and do the exercises as you travel with the article. It would help you have a master plan in your hand which will guide you in your future career.
Steps To Career Planning Strategies
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What can you be? Choose your career planning strategies
The whole of life is a trade-off. If you’ve not heard about the concept of opportunity cost, here it is. If you invest your today in reading a book, you can’t go out with your friends for a movie. Meaning, you can choose one of the two or more options. If you want to have the cake and at the same, you want to eat it too, then it doesn’t make sense. Thus, it’s prudence to know what you can be, not all you can be. It’s a career planning strategies self-assessment to see what career planning meaning suits your skills, interests, inclinations, and passions.
The career planning strategies advice which says that you can be anything you want doesn’t always work. You need to know your options and what your interest is. The best way to find that out is to list out all the skills you currently have. Make a list of everything. Then take a different sheet of paper and write down everything that you’re interested in doing. Now, look at both the lists. Select the common terms and make a third list which we will call – “the possibility list” and we will begin to work on them from there. This list-making exercise is very easy and it helps you bring clarity in your desire to be something in your career planning strategies.
One loop-hole of this method is what if you want to be something and the skills required for it doesn’t match with your current skills. Simple! Just learn the skill. Develop yourself. Thus, after making the list, you should have 3 lists of handy with you. Remember, these 3 lists are equally important.
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Prioritize and Choose
Everything you have on the list cannot be started at the same time. You need to choose from. Which should you pick first? The best option is to ask yourself what you want to be. The best question to ask yourself is if you have all the resources, finances and people available to you, what one thing you would like to be in your life? If you can ask yourself this question and ponder sometimes, you would get a definite answer. 3 lists you’ve made would help you choose the right answer.
Most people don’t achieve their full potential because they try to climb the wrong walls all through their career planning and development and at the end of the day they ask themselves – What if my whole career planning strategies have been wrong! But that’s too late. Don’t let yourself make that mistake. You have the opportunity to choose right now. You don’t need to listen to other people and you don’t need to think about what’s possible and what’s impossible. Rather simply concentrate on what you want to be with all your heart.
If you spend enough time on the above question (in bold), you would get an answer. Don’t ignore it. Simply follow through.
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Current vs. Future.
Most people suffer from the dilemma between what career planning strategies they should choose or choose a career planning meaning of their desire. The dilemma revolves around their current career planning meaning and their future ambition. If their current career planning and development seems to be very lucrative in terms of money, position, impact and job satisfaction, they think twice before moving on. But your future is not like your present. You need to uplift yourself. You need to grow. And you need to listen to your heart which aches to become what you’re capable of becoming.
Your current career planning and development is just a mild portion of what you can be in a real sense. Everyone can be a genius. But we let go of the best because we’re satisfied in the good. Yes, there’s risk. You need to take chances. You need to be unreasonable. People will call you names. But remember, life is short, much shorter than you and I can think. Not living up to our full potential is a terrible waste of our incredible talents, qualities, and skills. To put the risk out of the picture, begin a part-time adventurer. Don’t leave the job right now.
Keep the job and do what you want to be part-time. It may seem overwork and a little more time on the desk. But eventually it will pay off and you would understand the magic of your future career planning and development.
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Do a due diligence.
The dream looks bright in the eyes of the beholder. But is the dream beautiful in the practical world too? What if the dream you see is an illusion? You need to do a reality check. You need to go to the market and search for yourself that whether what you think is right or not. For example, in the training business, the market is not as beautiful as it seems.
There are a lot of trainers in the market and very few demands in the industry. Result? People who dream to be trainers remain trainers in their mind. But that doesn’t mean you can’t be a trainer if you want to be. Along with checking the reality of training business, you need to prepare yourself to be exceptional.
The place is only for the best of the best. Average has no place in the market. If you are not the best, why people will go to you? If you have an issue in the ear and you would like to be cured, who would you go for? The best ENT specialist in the town! Why? Because only best are in demand. If you want to make your mark, know the reality; but at the same time develop yourself to be world class.
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Create an action plan.
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Ideation without action is a delusion. If you have a plan to act upon and you know what you want to be in near future, that’s not enough. You need to create an action plan right away so that everything can be etched out on a paper. Write out every smallest step in detail. By doing this simple thing you would be able to make it easy.
The whole work is called the art of chunking down. When you take a big task and slice it in tiniest parts to make it easy, it’s called chunking down. Same here! To be something beyond your comfort zone, in the beginning, it seems overwhelming. But once you write down each step which will get you to your destination, the path would become easier. Are you writing down? Are you making a career planning importance while reading through? If not, start right away.
This article can be read in 15 minutes. But if you add another hour or so for doing all the career planning importance exercises mentioned here, you will have a master plan ready along the way.
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Set a deadline.
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Once you’re done writing all the action steps that will make you reach your mountain-top, the only thing you need to do is to set a deadline for each of the task. Why do that? A deadline is an assumed time within which you would like to take the step identified. A famous expert mentioned that – There are no unrealistic goals, only unrealistic deadlines.
So, while setting the deadlines think twice. What seems to take only one month may take more than a quarter or what seems to get finished within a year may get done only within 6 months. It’s always better to create a buffer time before setting any deadline. Buffer time is a time that can be used if things go wrong.
Try to make the buffer time 20% of the total time you decide to accomplish a task. For example, if you originally set a time for “market research” as 3 months (90 days), add a buffer time of 20% to it means another 18 days. So, the deadline you should set for accomplishing the task “market research” would be within 108 days. Do the same with every other task. It may seem to take some time. But at the end, it’s worth it.
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Meet a consultant.
Not everyone can afford a career planning strategies consultant or career counseling but everyone can find one. If you’re wondering where you would find the consultant, just pay heed. You will soon discover the place to search for and find a great consultant to help you with your plan. Till now if you’ve done all the exercises, you would know what you would like to become in your future. You need to find someone who already has treadled along the path you’re about to cross over to reach your summit. Keep looking. It may not be easy to find him/her right away.
But it’s said that we’re only six people away from our destination. It’s a law. It’s called “six degrees of separation.” If you want to search that person, ask as many people as you can. Eventually, you will get to know the person and then it’s up to you to convince him/her to look at your career planning importance. If they charge, pay. Rather than going to a career planning strategies consultant who has not crossed over your path, it’s better to find someone who did and ask for advice or your field career planning and development advisor.
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Take the first step, now.
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Do you know the 90-second rule? It says if you don’t take action within 90 seconds of deciding something, chances are you’re never going to take any step at all. Seems drastic? Yes, it is. Most of us are very good talkers, some of us are also very good planners. But among all of us, very few are good executors. If you want to be among the executors who do, what they say, then it’s time to take that first step. Thus, we want you to finish your career planning strategies while you’re reading the article. It will save your time and you would also be counted among the very best executors in the planet.
Do you know the percentage of executors on the planet? Only 1%! 99% of the population may get angry, blame and complain about their bad luck, but actually, people who succeed are those who execute immediately what they’ve planned. Are you among the executors or among people who invent and then destroy the world only by their words?
Recommended
So here are some courses that will help you to get the more detail about the career planning strategies, career planning and development, career planning importance and also about the career planning meaning so just go through the link which is given below.
Maveja Kandingua says
This is a very good guideline and would like to get more advise on the way forward. I have made a similar mistake of not executing within 90 second and of writing down my to do list.
Roo Hesham says
thanks for this guideline, it help a lot but need to add examples to simplify the messages more. if you can help me with master plan