Everyone aspires to have a great career. But how many of us actually know how to prepare for one? There are a few basic elements that can greatly augment your career journey and help you move forward in the right direction. A great career doesn’t happen by chance, it requires preparation and planning. The first step in planning your career is knowing what you want to do. Some of us know exactly what we want to do, however, a lot of us are quite clueless as to what our goals are. Students tend to be confused regarding the route to achieving their dreams. Creating a career development plan helps differentiate between dreams and goals. In order to make your dreams come true, you need to have a career goal, outline your career options, and create a realistic plan to achieve career success.
Stages of a successful career journey
Preparing for a career is one of the most important aspects of a student’s life. It eventually becomes the driving force of life as they spend the most amount of time preparing for a career journey. To ensure a successful career and a high quality of life, it’s necessary to make sure that the career role serves the purpose of meeting one’s short- and long-term goals. As a career decision affects every facet of life, it needs to be made with care.
Some students are aware of their career goals and start working toward them from an early age. However, a lot of students don’t know which career to choose and end up being disappointed, confused and dissatisfied. Later, they may pursue a career for all the wrong reasons, like peer pressure, family history, or following job trends.
Having a successful career journey depends on discovering what’s right for you. Here are 5 steps to do just that:
- Self-assessment: Trying to work on a career journey without knowing yourself and what you wish to do is like collecting ingredients for a recipe you know nothing about. Discovering yourself and aligning your interests and skill with your career path is the first step toward a successful career journey. Assess yourself under the guidance of an education counsellor to discover your strengths, capabilities, interests, aptitudes, and preferred work environment.
- Career exploration: The next stage is exploring how you can achieve what you want. Create a list of career options that match your areas of interest and capabilities. Explore various career opportunities and their growth avenues based on your self-assessment.
- Career identification: As the name suggests, career identification involves finding the best career option from a list of potential career opportunities. The process of identifying your career is done by considering all factors, like required skills, education, salary package, etc.
- Action plan: Drafting an action plan is the most important stage of a successful career journey. The action plan decides how you will work on your identified career goal. It is a road map to your career journey that will help you achieve your goals. As Antoine de Saint-Exupéry said, “A goal without a plan is just a wish.” An action plan is crucial for your career growth.
- Professional advice: The road to a successful career journey involves meeting people from the industry you wish to work in. Talking to professionals in your chosen field helps you to understand the working environment. It gives you a glimpse of your chosen field, prepares you for the challenges therein, and also helps you decide whether you would want to live that life.
How to groom yourself for a successful career journey?
Although each career journey is unique, there are some common tools that can help anyone reach their goal. Remember these 4 things to better prepare for your new career journey:
Career counselling
If you are someone who needs a gentle push towards choosing a career pathway, it is a good idea to seek career counselling. Counselling plays an important role in helping people find a suitable professional career path. Expert guidance from mentors and counsellors can help you understand your strengths, interests and capabilities. Based on your choices and interests, a counsellor outlines career goals. Counselling enables you to be confident about your career choice and make evidence-based decisions.
Aptitude tests
A career aptitude test is an important tool to evaluate your interests, skills, abilities, potential, and personality traits. LaunchMyCareer’s Buzz Quiz is a unique personality test that helps students assess their skill set in a fun and engaging way. To be confident in a career choice, a major factor is knowing your strengths, weaknesses, and abilities. Buzz Quiz works as a catalyst to know yourself deeply. It encompasses an analysis of your persona to filter out the best career options for you.
SMART goals
To explore and identify the most suitable career option, you need to set up SMART goals that aid the decision-making process. SMART goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-bound goals that make your career journey worthwhile. Creating a list of goals creates a sense of accountability to fulfill them, and can also help you understand why you want to pursue a certain career field. When you write down SMART goals with intention, they can become long-term objectives that you want to pursue with relentless enthusiasm.
Gather knowledge
Continuous learning is the hallmark of life. Do not lose any opportunity to gather information about your chosen career, because knowledge gives you an edge over your peers. Strive to know everything about the top professionals in your chosen career field, and study their career journeys. It helps you analyse the opportunities and challenges in your career pathway and how you can overcome them. It also instills a sense of confidence and credibility in yourself.
Creating the right plan for career success is essential to developing clear and achievable career goals. Have an accurate vision of the future, know your abilities, define your goals and work towards achieving them. Don’t hesitate to reach out to an experienced education counsellor who can guide you and clear your doubts. Visit LaunchMyCareer now. Take a leap of faith, there’s a beautiful career pathway waiting for you.
