Evaluating Career Competencies

This is the second 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.
EVALUATING THE COMPETENCIES NEEDED TO PERFORM SUCCESSFULLY IN THE POSITION YOU SEEK

The first step in career planning, assuming you've chosen your ideal position, is evaluating the competencies required to be successful in that position.

So, where do you start? First gather good solid information about the position you want. Your approach will depend on the position, your industry, and how long the position has been around.

There are sources for overall information. The most common/popular would be the Occupational Outlook Handbook   published by the Department Of Labor and Statistics . This publication tells you the education and training you need, earning expectations, and what workers are expected to do, for hundreds of different types of jobs. Other common sources include industry publications and job postings.

Another good source of information is to find someone willing to mentor your or at least answer your questions about what is needed for the position you are seeking.

One thing you'll find in your search for information is that traditional positions such as CEO, CFO, VP of Sales have well defined competencies. They've been around for quite a while and have been polished and refined. The sources of information are numerous. As you get into positions such as CIO and CTO you have less information available and much less when you look at positions such as Chief Information Security Officer or VP of Business Intelligence. Whatever the position do your research and cross check your information. You'll find that most positions change from company to company, but there are core competencies or principles they have in common.

So, what type of information are you looking for? Here is a short list to build from.

1. Leadership and teamwork skills required
2. Technical Skills required
3. Educational Requirements
4. Experience Requirements
5. Ability to Innovate
6. Ability to operate in a global market.

This list is just a start. The specific information you need to fully understand the position you want will be specific to that position, once you have compiled and interpreted your information run it past someone for a sanity check. Have someone already in that position or close to that position review it. The importance here is too have good accurate information because the next step is evaluating yourself against the competencies you have determined to be important. That will be the next post.