What is a Career?
A career includes all the roles you undertake throughout your life – education, training, paid and unpaid work, family, volunteer work, leisure activities and more.
“Career” was traditionally associated with paid employment and referred to a single occupation. In today’s world the term career is seen as a continuous process of learning and development. Activities that contribute to a career can include:
• Education
• Training/Internships
• Employment
• Community activities
• Enterprise activities
• Different life roles
• Volunteer work
What is Career Management?
This is a process through which an employee becomes aware of his/her own interests; strengths, weaknesses; and desires.
He/She identify his/her career objectives and goals.
Establish an action plan how to achieve his/her career goals.
Career Management steps:
1. Discovering your interests and needs – identifying your skills, knowledge, qualifications, personal choices, culture preferences.
2. Career options investigating – understanding professional roles, exploring industry segment, researching salary ranges.
3. Set goals
4. Learning how to achieve goals.
What steps can you take to increase your career management?
1. Upgrade your skills – courses, distance, online learning, etc.
2. Get involved in active networking – join an association in your field, where you can network, get to know people and ‘get known’, and hear about job opportunities before they are advertised; volunteer a couple of hours a week at an organization, where you feel you can make a difference? These will also provide networking opportunities where you can make useful connections.
3. Stay mobile – Are you reluctant to move, when you see a job in another city, state, or country that will boost your career? You don’t have to think of this as a long-term commitment. Can you do it for a year? That’s manageable. When you have that experience under your belt, you will then be at a different level in your ‘career’, which opens up a lot of opportunities that weren’t there before.
4. Take Steps to Avoid Burnout – Know what burnout feels like. What is the difference between “Burnout” and “Stress”? ‘Burnout’ is sneaky, it creeps up on you in a long, slow slide. Once it overtakes you, however, it’s not easy to get out of. It takes longer to recover from ‘burnout’, than to rescue yourself, before you fall into it. Take this Burnout Checklist, and find out two ways that burnout can disguise itself.
How to make the best career choices?
• knowing yourself – what you like (your interests), what you are good at (your skills and abilities), what is important to you (values)
• getting to understand the world of work – what’s out there
• learning how to make informed decisions
• finding out how to achieve objectives.
What does career success mean to you?
The definition of career success is very personal.
For one it may be the prestige of a title, while for another it may be the amount of money earned. One must ask why it is so important to define a successful career. There are many reasons why it is important.
If you cannot define what makes a successful career means to you, how can you know if you are happy where you are in your career right now, if you’ve never defined what career success means to you?
If you haven’t defined your own career success, it means someone else has already done it for you.
When you are defining your career success, be sure to stay focused on what’s important.
Your success is a journey that happens over time. It may have multiple lows and highs. It’s a bit like stepping blocks where one success will lead to another success. Setbacks occur and mistakes are made. You simply pick up and keep moving towards your goal.
How to achieve career success:
• Through career management – You must manage your career like you would manage your business
• To increase your career success increase your value to your employer
• Make the most out of your performance review
• Build your career around what you love
• Carefully build a network to work within
• Stay positive
• Remember it take a huge amount of action to create the positive outcome you want
Remember in order to have a successful career you must first define what that means to you.