Career Development Plan - Easy Steps on Your Career Ladder

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.

Easy steps? Well nobody is suggesting that career progression is easy, but once you have established your career targets and broken them down into achievable short-term goals it's much easier to get motivated and it's easier to measure your progress. If you can tick things off your list it's rewarding and so the next part of your career plan becomes a positive driving force. So yes, it becomes easier. Certainly much easier than the person who is kind of thinking about, maybe getting something sorted out, eventually...

Vague thinking like that gets you nowhere. A solid career development plan gets you moving.

There is no specifically right or wrong way to put your plan together. It should be written down (or typed into a computer) because in doing so you reinforce each step - you put each rung on your career ladder. It fixes it in your mind. Also, if you write it down you won't forget any detail. You may think you have a great memory but things slip and details are vital. You want to be able to picture things in your mind.

You need to set out where you are and where you want to go. OK, that sounds obvious but "where you are" includes where you are in terms of qualification as well as job position. Where you want to get to can be long-term or medium-term and that tends to depend on how concrete your career thinking is, or if there are a number of options in the future. It may be that getting to point A then gives you the choice of going to points B or C. If that's the case, your career development path won't be as long as for someone who has a well defined single-track career goal. It's not a weakness or a drawback it's just a different approach.

The only wrong career development plan is the one that you haven't made!

We're just scratching the surface here. Get all the right tactics for success plus more free help and advice here: Career Development Plan.

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