Career Planning – A Preliminary Guide for Students
For those ambitious little peas that wish to be their stalk someday, career planning is some important fertilizer. It is not as confusing as it may seem at first. If anything, career planning can be a highly satisfying personal project to undertake. What’s more, this simple task you undertake today will yield benefits over many years in terms of providing you with clarity of mind and helping you with those tough-pronged career decisions down the road.
But what really is career planning, you ask?
To a student who is yet to join the work-force, the term career planning can be seen as a way to strategize your long-term career goals. In a way, you can think of this as a seaman trying to chart his way through the rough seas before the sailing has begun. It can be important for several reasons:
- With set long and short-term goals,
- Career planning pre-emptively prepares you to attain that dream job…
- …as well as the hurdles and challenges that may come your way.
- This would also mean that you assess your skills and abilities, handing you a good feel of your ship before you take it out to the seas.
- You get a sense of reality, and how things are, as you start pulling things out of your mind and putting them on paper.
As optimized as career planning makes your future, it is important to do it right. Here are some ways you can kick-start the planning of your career:
Assess Yourself
It is of the utmost importance when taking up the planning of your career to know what your skills, interests and personality are like. These are what will ultimately influence what you choose to do down the road. Apart from just this, it also lets you know where you stand in terms of what you want.
Research Different Career Options
It would be wise to look up and know about the various careers available to you once you have assessed your skills. This would help you choose the one right for you and take the next steps in the right direction.
Decide on a Career Path
Having completed both previous steps, the third is a natural follow-up. With a fair idea of where you stand and the careers that attract you, choosing your primary and secondary options should be an easy task.
Define Your Long Term and Short-Term Goals
Having come this far, it would be prudent to ask yourself and answer this one important question: “What are my long term and short term goals and plans?”
Compare and Accordingly Expand Your Skillset
Chances are, in your present state, you fall short of the qualifications and skills the career of your choice demands. Now is a good time to start working on them, be it through a complete university program or other available programs or certifications.
With all that cleared out for you, it is now time to put down a game plan – of how you are going to go about achieving the goals you set down for yourself.
With these preliminary steps complete, you are quite, quite ready to navigate the high waters of a rather competitive world. However, do not lose sight of what you set out to achieve – any career plan is only as good as its execution.
All set to make your own success story? Here is a handy resource you help you out:
