Career Planning: It's all about Attitude!

Career planning is the first step for success with your career. Unfortunately, many professionals are not in control of their careers as they simply watch their careers unfold, not knowing how they will attain their career goals or what they want to achieve. Career planning is never too late. IT Managers, Professionals, trainees, newcomers or Chief Information Officers (CIO) all need to take a look into the future.

An "I-don't-care" or "anything goes" approach won't allow you to reach your potential. You and other professionals have a choice; you can decide to take control of your career through planning and by taking wise decisions based on these plans. Don't let your career happen! Make your career happen! Clearly you need to be self-motivated with a relatively clear sense of whom and what you want to be.

Too many people focus on Certification and other career tools without any consideration for career growth. Training, Certification and work experience should only be considered within the context of your unique, individual career development plan. The issue of certification comes only after you have a realistic career development plan in place. So what does having a career development plan entail?

Assessment

A career development plan requires what I term as career self assessment and career situation assessment. What do I mean by career self-assessment? Career self-assessment requires to you ask and answer questions that relate to your career expectations. You must ask yourself the questions: What sort of working life do you want? What type of work or activity makes you happy? What are your career goals? What are your ambitions, personal or lifestyle preferences? In terms of career satisfaction what is important to you? It is essentially about the direction you want your life to go.

Generally, the areas you should consider are: Nature of work, Work interests, Recognition, Security, Income (Salary and benefits), Personal / Family life, Opportunities for growth and Responsibility. Simply put what would give you career satisfaction in each of these areas? Which areas are of top priority, which are unimportant, which are you indifferent to? Through this you can identify IT jobs / environments that interest you. Use reliable resources available to help you learn more about your areas of interest.

You may need to write down your professional short- and long-term goals. Be descriptive and edit them over and over until you are sure these goals are what you desire.

A valuable career self-assessment is one that is honest. Lying to yourself will not help. Understand, and be happy, with what you want to do.

Next you need to do what I would call a career situation assessment. What is your current career situation? What stage are you at your career? What is your current situation with respect to your work or profession? Are you in a job that meets your ideal situation? If you are out of work, what is your background? Are you self-employed? Or are you a student? Again you must use the criteria you used for your career self-assessment to assess your current career status. Are you currently meeting your expectations in terms of Nature of work, Security, Income (Salary and benefits), Personal / Family life, Opportunities for growth, Responsibility, etc? This involves assessing your current skills and experience to identify what you must learn, or experience you need to acquire to excel. What practical knowledge do you have? How relevant are your present skills and experience to your goals?

Which areas require improvement? It must be pointed out at this juncture that certification or training is not the solution to all your career limitations. Some career shortcomings will not be solved through certification. Since you know your career goals it should be easy for you to identify your career gaps.

Closing the Career Gap

The next step is therefore what you must do to address these career gaps or shortcomings.

So how do you actually reach your career goal? You need to be focused. Deciding on a particular profession or job is only half the task. More simply put, it is time to develop a step-by-step plan. As stated earlier, the essence of a career plan is knowing what you want and determining how to get it.

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