Career Management

Career Management is the combination of structured planning and the active management choice of one’s own professional career. Career management was first defined in a social work doctoral thesis by Mary Valentich as the implementation of a career strategy through application of career tactics in relation to chosen career orientation. Career orientation referred to the overall design or pattern of one’s career, shaped by particular goals and interests and identifiable by particular positions that embody these goals and interests. Career strategy pertains to the individual’s general approach to the realization of career goals, and to the specificity of the goals themselves. Two general strategy approaches are adaptive and planned. Career tactics are actions to maintain oneself in a satisfactory employment situation. Tactics may be more or less assertive, with assertiveness in the work situation referring to actions taken to advance one’s career interests or to exercise one’s legitimate rights while respecting the rights of others.

Success as managing one’s career effectively through the attainment of desired positions and other rewards. The outcome of successful career management should include personal fulfillment, work–life balance, goal achievement and financial security.

A career includes all types of employment ranging from semi-skilled through skilled, and semiprofessional to professional. Careers have often been restricted to an employment commitment to a single trade skill, profession or business firm for the entire working life of a person. In recent years, however, a career now includes changes or modifications in employment during the foreseeable future.

The following classification system with minor variations is widely used:

• Development of overall goals and objectives,
• Development of a strategy (a general means to accomplish the selected goals/objectives),
• Development of the specific means (policies, rules, procedures and activities) to implement the strategy, and
• Systematic evaluation of the progress toward the achievement of the selected goals/objectives to modify the strategy, if necessary.

Factors

• Economic Downsizing:

The biggest of all the factors that has badly affected the careers of millions of individuals is economic downsizing. The jobs are cut from the organizations and the fittest of all employees survive. If employees continuously learn new and better skills, chances are that economic conditions won’t hurt them that badly as compared to other individuals.

• De-layering:

De-layering means reclassification of jobs. This is an organizational change initiative where a company decides to reclassify the jobs more broadly. However, old reporting lines do exist in order to maintain managerial control but some jobs may be removed or cut down during the process. Again, those individuals have to leave the organization who are not competent enough to be shifted to other job with different nature.

• Cost Reduction Strategies of the Organization:

Cost-reduction strategies of the organizations are again very dangerous for those individuals who are not prepared to move on to the next level. If organizations have to cut down their operating costs, the employment of those individuals is at stake who are not employable or who have not performed up to the mark in past. Employees continuously need to upgrade themselves and show their talent in order to remain in the organizations till long.

• IT Innovations:

Continuous changes and upgradation in the technology is also one of the major factors that bring change. Some individuals can keep a pace with the changing technology and are always ready to learn and adopt new IT applications while some show immense resistance which is not acceptable to the organizations. Employees need to keep themselves updated and show willingness to accept changes as and when they occur and mould themselves accordingly.

Importance of Career Planning

It is important to come up with your career planning as it gives you the much needed direction and makes it clear there where you see yourself in future. It makes you aware of your strength and weaknesses and the skills and knowledge that are required to achieve your goals in future.

A large proportion of our life is spent in achieving our career goals, thus it is very important to make sure that right steps were taken and correct planning was done in the early years of your life. There are very few lucky ones who are born with a clear mind and who knows what they want to do and where they see themselves in life ahead. But majority of us are not sure what we want from life and so it in very important to plan out things. Thus career planning is what gives your career and in some way your life, true meaning and purpose. Human life is the brilliant life and career play vital role in it. In short without a career in your life is useless.

Process of Career Planning:

The process of career planning is also known as career development stages and career development model. These steps help you in planning your career and deciding about your future.

• Self-development

Once you have self-analyzed yourself, the second step that awaits your attention is to fill the loopholes you have identified in the above step. By this we mean that in this step you have to see that what are the qualities and skills that are required by you to help you achieve your aims and goals. For instance you might decide that you need training or a particular course in a field in order to make you perfect for the profession you have chosen.

It could be that you are interested in painting but you are not much aware of the trends or the knowledge that is required for this field. Or there can be a case where you are interested and much aware about a profession like teaching but you do not yet know that what is the niche level that is meant for you like and the subjects you can carry off pretty well.

• A thorough research self-development

Once you have listed the careers that are favorable in your case and the skills and improvements that are required by you in order to achieve excellence the third step requires you to do an intensive research and see that what that are findings related to career options and the skills that are required to make you champion in that. You research will be looking into following questions:

• Come up with action form

Once you have researched the feasibility of the factors that you have finalized in above steps, the next step is to show some action and translate your plans on a piece of page. This step requires you to make plan as in how you are going to achieve and fulfill the steps you have decided above. The best way to come with an action plan is to come up with small goals for oneself. Once these small goals are achieved, we can see that how much close we are to our main aim and major goal. This small step acts as a path way to the main aim.

• Action

Once you are done with small goals and the main aim, the next step remains to start implementing your plans. Keep a very close track of your activities to make sure that you are on the right track and that by following this path you are surely going to achieve you goal!