Plan ur Career

How To Plan Your Career?
Career Planning is a long process, which begins right from the time one starts visiting school. Choosing a job that will suit you best depend on a number of factors, beginning with your interest and what you enjoy most. This is most important since there is no point working if; you do not enjoy the work you are doing. Secondly, it is also important to know what you wish to achieve in future. Setting prior goals is essential as this is what is going to motivate you in attaining results at the earliest.

The initial few years of your career are the most crucial period. It is during this phase that you realize which will be the perfect job for you. Counsellors also suggest that one should keep experimenting with a variety of profiles during this period to see where the interest actually lies. The career planning cycle has been broken into four stages that help in evaluating your position and take you to your desired position. The four stages are as follows:

Where you are? Where can you be? How can you be there? Are you actually getting there?

Let's now study these four stages and see what they actually mean.

The first step in career planning is self-assessment. To find out 'Where you are' placed and why you are in the position. Once you start evaluating your position you will know how focused or lost you are. And accordingly, you will also know how to refocus on your goals and move ahead. Proper and effective evaluation of the reason for your stagnation or your development is also essential. On doing this, you will know if the job you are currently pursuing is actually of interest to you or not.

Your next level should be to set goals, i.e. answering the question, 'Where can you be?' This is a very practical stage of your career planning and no assumptions or superficial beliefs would help you in this situation. Your assessment should be an effective reality check on your growth to find out of the loopholes if it exists anywhere. At this level, you also need to make up your mind clearly as to where you really wish to get, while you are making your career moves.

On answering the above two, you have now successfully reached the third and most dynamic stage of your career planning. Here you need to figure out 'How can you be there?' and prepare your skills and knowledge accordingly. Do a SWOT analysis on your self, i.e. a rigorous check of your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. This is the stage of implementing your plans. This is the execution phase.

Next comes a final assessment, to find out whether you are actually getting there. This is a periodical check on your moves. And will guide you to the right path.

The next most important thing in choosing the right career is to evaluate if your values, beliefs and attitude will fit in the job or not. There is no job satisfaction if you are not rightly and adequately paid for the job. And this is one reason for which most people are dissatisfied with their work.

Invest some time out of your schedule to find out the answer to these simple questions and find a career for yourself, which will compliment you and help you to love your workplace.