Everyone wants career growth for a bright future. From students, and employees to entrepreneurs career development is needed for these individuals who always look forward to their bright future.
This guide will be helpful for each individual who is serious about his or her career growth.
What is career development?
Career development is a set of multiple strategic processes to achieve goals and success. These strategic processes mainly solve problems of the career development journey. Career development itself is a lifelong process to make advancements in career, to achieve dreams, goals, growth, and success. We are living in the world of contributions. Everyone is contributing their best to the world, but some of them don’t know how to do better and in effective ways so their contribution gives them desirable results. That’s why career development is needed for those people who want to do work in more advanced and effective working ways to achieve success and growth and most important peace of mind.
How does career development work?
Most of the time people work as per their desires, needs and knowledge, but to achieve success and growth is necessary to follow discipline too. Discipline is a tough way to follow, when we apply discipline in our working life, we achieve more accurate results. These all directions and discipline career development teach well. In the career development process, we follow discipline with strategic planning, or in other words, we make plans to achieve goals with directions and then we follow those directions.
Career development teaches people to be more advance and learn things to be better day by day. Initially, people start to learn about their strengths and weaknesses. They work well on themselves to be a better person then they will work according to their strengths and feel more confident and motivated. if they already batter in skills then they work toward gaining more leverage of that skills and learn some new skills too. People’s time managing skills and handling big responsibilities gradually increase, and people, feel more confident to handle challenging situations.
Why is career development important?
Whether we work with the organization or work independently as an entrepreneur we need career planning. We make plans with small steps to achieve our goals and to grow in our careers.
For making all these strategies career development is important.
Career development is important because –
- We learn time-management
- We work according to our strengths.
- Organizational growth becomes clear
- Employees feel secure, confident, trust and engaged in activities.
- We take clear steps to grow in our careers.
- Job securities become stronger.
- We enjoy more financial freedom and feel secure in finance.
- We handle tough times with confidence.
- We set goals with strong directions and achieve them in a specific timeline.
- Career or professional life becomes easier and more satisfying.
- Our relationships become better.
- Learn to define the right professional path.
- We insure our peace of mind.
- We learn to establish a personal brand.
- Become more skilled and knowledgeable than before.
- Increase quality of work life.
- Improves use and implementation of knowledge & skills.
- Improves morale and motivation in work life.
- Learn to take responsibility for our weaknesses.
- We take charge of our advancements.
Factors that affect career development
Every individual who starts a career development journey faces some challenges and obstacles or obligations. Because everyone’s life struggle goes through various problems and everyone’s life is different so here, we are describing 6 major factors that affect career development.
Personal Characteristics
Different person has different personality, and these personalities had several characteristics like risk-taking, creativity, passion, motivation, curiosity, positivity etc. These personal traits can be positive and negative too. Positive characteristics are supportive in career development but when negative they impact badly on the career development journey.
People should know their personality type before choosing a career development journey so they can go with their best abilities according to their personality. It will be very helpful in your career development journey if you know your all abilities and flaws by knowing your actual personality through personality tests or self-assessment or reading articles about personality types.
Financial issues
Choosing a specific career can be costly. if you choose to become an engineer it will require pursuing college graduation and your college fees, tuition fees and all expenses will be required. Maybe you will not able to complete all your education in absence of money. So first you need to choose the right path to earn money like part-time jobs so can complete your education.
And some people trying to switch careers so they will need money at least for one to two months so can sustain family expenses. Likewise, financial obligations come in way of a career development journey. You have to find solutions to these financial obligations to start career development. For this, you can save money by reducing extra expenses like changing big apartments to a small house to save rent and selling some old & extra things to collect some money. Or can do part-time extra side income activities.
Mental, Emotional, and Physical Impairments
Everyone does not have a special academic background like an engineering or doctor’s degree. Some people have natural talent in tech and some in arts. All people have a special talent in a specific field. People have to balance their mental, emotional and physical impairments so they can achieve good results with a high success rate.
Do not compare yourself with another person’s perfect fit professional life. Instead of this try to find your actual natural talent. So you can also become better at your field of knowledge or expertise. Your mental, emotional and physical abilities are good for your career development journey my friend. You have to just make a balance between them and pair them into a perfect field of your expertise.
Age
Media and social media rapidly changing our perception of age. Maybe you are thinking that I’m not a good fit doing this or that career opportunity because of your age. You may worry about your age that you are too young or old. But it depends on you how much you are excited or motivated to take a career development journey.
If your desire is strong to be successful no matter how young or old you are, you will succeed in it. Do not think about age while choosing an opportunity for career development, just think about how good you can do and how much you are better at it.
Family and Relationship Obligations
There are so many responsibilities to managing a family. These responsibilities require great attention with financial support and our valuable time too. When we start our career development journey, we should consider this factor seriously. Our decision should not affect the family function or facilities like rent, education, spending time with family and attending family functions etc.
We should design career development in an effective way where the family can also not affect and family responsibilities and needs cannot affect our career development journey. Maybe some people are not in a complete family, they are just couples or started a relationship.
Those people also consider their partner’s decision while taking career development decisions. Maybe A few people are affected by relationship conflicts or some type of harassment etc, those people should resolve these conflicts soon before starting a career development plan.
Make sure your family and relationships become better through your career development decisions.
And they also support your decisions so you can effectively work on a career development plan.
Environment & Culture
Every country has its own culture. Culture defines morality and values. There are several different cultures and different values at a certain geographic location. These values shape our opinions. Maybe some cultures give more value to a specific job title or some of them do not. Some cultures give value to businesses and other cultures give value to government jobs. It may be hard to explain to some people your career development journey because of different cultural values.
Choosing a career that does not belong to cultural values or morals could be difficult to pursue. Sometimes your environment does not meet the required support or may be difficult to understand your career development journey. Thus, culture and environment affect your career development decisions. You can decide to choose a job which meets cultural values and morals too. You may choose a career of your own. But before you have to think about the environment too. If both do not affect your career interests you can choose career development as per your choice.
What is career development plan & why do we need it?
A career development plan consists of several activities divided into small tasks to achieve our goals.
It also includes self-assessment, setting goals, making a roadmap, applying strategies and reviewing all plans and successful results. In other words, it is a strong direction for successfully achieving goals and career success.
We need it because without making a footprint and road map we cannot go far in careers or success. We are stuck in a loop where we do not succeed much. For professional career growth, we need a strong plan to execute on time. When we make a career development plan and dedicatedly follow it, we set deadlines in that we will chase our dreams and career success.
The career development plan is the clear road map for career success & growth. We face ups and downs but if we have a career development plan, we take all the challenges with confidence towards achieving our goals.
Career development strategies
A career development plan is not enough to succeed. Career strategies also make a huge impact on the career development journey. Career advancement comes as a result of higher salaries, more exciting projects and great respect for motivation.
For career development strategy you can build a professional network. Networking is a key to success in career advancement. Most of the job openings are filled by networking. You can choose a good mentor in the professional field to take help in career advancement. Peoples who take mentorship help are more successful.
Taking more responsibilities can make you highlight in the industry and taking or asking for extra tasks will increase your knowledge and experience. You have to master your field of work and knowledge to become top in the industry. Most successful peoples are the best in their industry. You can further your education to increase your knowledge and become more advanced in the field.
Conclusion
Career development is a process consisting of multiple small tasks into a plan and strategy to achieve career advancement and goals.
Is it important in a scenario where you want to be successful in your professional career. It helps you to become self-motivated, and self-independent, to lead your career.
Several factors affect the career development journey personal characteristic, financial issues, mental, emotional and physical impairments, age, family and relationship obligations, environment and culture.
You can make plans and strategies for career development. Career development plans & strategies are strong directions and a roadmap for professional growth.
I hope you have learned and understand all about career development.
What plan you are going to make for your professional growth? or Which factors are affecting your career development journey? Please write to us in the comment section below.