Career development is the series of activities in an ongoing/lifelong process of developing one’s career which includes defining new goals regularly and acquiring skills to achieve them. Career development usually refers to managing one’s career in an intra-organizational or inter-organizational scenario. It involves training on new skills, moving to higher job responsibilities, making a career change within the same organization, moving to a different organization, or starting one’s own business.
Career development is directly linked to the goals and objectives set by an individual. It starts with self-actualization and self-assessment of one’s interests and capabilities. The interests are then matched with the available options.
Career development is directly linked to an individual’s growth and satisfaction and hence should be managed by the individual and not left to the employer. Career development helps an individual grow not only professionally but also personally. Learning new skills like leadership, time management, good governance, communication management, team management etc. also helps an employee develop and shape their career.
5 Steps of Career Development
There are various steps or stages in a person’s overall career development:
1. Self Assessment
The first step in career development is the self-assessment which means that the individual has to assess oneself on the kind of career and growth one wants and what kind of skills and interests are there.
2. Career Awareness
This stage is when an individual explores various career paths which align with the self-assessment done in the first step. Career awareness can be how a person can explore various domains and types of jobs/work available
3. Goal Setting
This is the most important step in career development because this is where one defines clear short-term and long-term goals to meet the career one aspires. Both short-term and long-term goals need to be defined to begin with.
Short-team goals would be more actionable but long-term goals can be changed or tweaked as per the growth.
4. Skill Training
Once the career and goals are set, one needs to acquire the right skills to achieve growth. Skill training can be done through self-training or joining a structured training program online or offline.
