CAREER planning is a crucial matter in life. It determines the direction of your career path and eventually links to the lifestyle that you will have.
Career planning occurs before you decide on the career to embark on. Not only that, it also occurs during any career progression as you might meet with certain opportunities and need to make adjustments to your current career plan.
Hence, planning, adjustment and re-planning are ongoing processes that you have to go through during your entire working life.
Why do you need career planning? Without career planning, you could easily end up in a place where you don’t want to be and in the long run, find your work to be meaningless and boring.
After assessing your abilities, interests and personality, you should listen to your heart. What are the areas you would like to venture into having considered the abilities you possess to meet the requirements?
A lot of young people are easily influenced by material needs, social values and peer competition and allow all these things to influence their judgement and decisions.
However, they need to listen to their hearts to see where their passions lie. Do you love this job? Are you passionate about the job? If you have great passion for a certain job or you are confident that you are able to meet the job challenges or you believe that you are able to produce good results being in the job, you should listen to your heart and go for the job.
Working life is very long and time is needed to gain a lot of experience. It is very hard for you to understand the nature of the job and prospects at first glance. Hence, it is better for you to seek career guidance from others to find out and understand more about the career you are considering taking on.
This will provide you with a broader view and save you the trouble of taking a long and winding road towards your desired career path.
You can look for a qualified career guidance consultant to find out about the nature of the job, career path, challenges and opportunities that come along with a certain career.
Talking to those who are already working in this line will also provide you with a clearer picture about the career path and the challenges involved. As long as you are willing to listen to the experienced ones, you will be able to gain some invaluable points. With this, your career path will be much smoother than those who are ignorant.
Career planning always requires readjustment and planning at every stage. It even requires change at certain points. The most important thing is to keep your principles in mind — your personal worth and ability to contribute to society. As long as you keep this goal in mind, you will be flexible enough to make changes and adjustments when opportunities arise or the situation requires it.
Career planning is not about setting the highest goals. Rather, it is making practical and realistic plans that you are able to accomplish. When you are able to carry out your plan step by step and every step leads to your goal, then your career planning would be deemed successful.
In making any career plan, we should know ourselves fully and learn to analyse the pros and cons of the career, company and job. When you have more information and understanding, your planning will be more accurate.
If you are able to take the first right step, you will find that you are able to progress much faster and smoother than most people who do not. And when you are faced with obstacles, you will be able to persevere as you know that you are on the right path.
When making any career plan, do not restrict yourself to seeking material needs alone. After you have met the basic needs, you will desire to be recognised, respected and to realise your dreams. Hence your career goals should also include social responsibilities so that your career is more complete and satisfying in the long run.
Priscilla Hiu is a career guidance consultant of Gracia Management and a certified behavioural consultant of DISC Personality Profiling System, Institution of Motivation Living, USA and Extended DISC Personality Profiling System, Extended DISC Northgate.