Career Planning - Taking Control Of Your Future

This is the first post of a five part series on why career planning is important and how to go about doing it. The five sections are as follows

1. Introduction
2. Evaluating the competencies needed to perform successfully in the position you seek
3. Evaluating your competencies and performing a gap analysis
4. Developing a learning plan
5. Setting your goals and putting your plan into action.

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INTRODUCTION

I have seen many postings about professional networking and the importance of making business contacts and cultivating relationships that will help you along in your career. I get the impression that many of these postings take for granted that you already have a career path that you are headed down. It has been, at least in my case, that although most of us see the end goal that we want, we lack the plan for getting to that goal. Many of us have a rough idea of where we want to be and in our current positions we may see the next promotions we need to get there. For example, I’m a Security Engineer and to become a CISO I will need to be promoted to Senior Engineer, Security Manager, and finally CISO.

Although that is a career path what does it really take to get there? This is the question that was posed in my MBA capstone. It’s one that we often don’t think about and one that leaves many of us wondering why we did not get the promotion to that next step we needed.

Career planning is an in-depth process that allows you to evaluate yourself against the career path you are on, or desire to be on. There are several parts to developing a career plan, 1) Evaluating the competencies needed to perform successfully in the position you seek, 2) Evaluating your competencies and performing a gap analysis, 3) Developing a learning plan and 4) Setting your goals and putting your plan into action.

Step 4 is where professional networking comes in. If you don’t know how you plan to get to that position you want, you may be wasting your networks time hoping someone will guide you to where you want to be.

A side effect of career planning is a more polished resume and confidence during the interview process. No longer will you look at a potential job simply for the title, you will know exactly what you bring to the position and what you hope to gain from the position. You will also find value in your current employment through identifying projects that can be of use in gaining the competencies you needed.

A plan allows you to maximize your opportunities and make the most of your time and efforts. So, before you continue to build your professional network make sure you have a plan in place so you can use it most effectively.