One key aspect of having a professional development plan is creating a specific career plan which helps you set and achieve professional goals, regardless of whether you are switching jobs or beginning your career. In other words, a career plan is a strategy that helps you create, select, and set both short- and long-term career goals and create actionable steps towards achieving those goals.
That said, a career plan will provide you with a competitive edge as a professional and enable you to manage a career more successfully than others in the same industry or field. For that reason, the leading SFIA and competency management company – SkillsTX – offering the ultimate services in Australia, has decided to show you how to create a career plan. Therefore, read on and find out more:
- Do Self-Assessment
First, to be able to progress in your future career and make informed decisions, you have to perform a self-assessment and determine your interests, skills, strengths, and needs. Luckily, there are plenty of tests that can help you identify these factors. Such tests may include:
- an aptitude test (to check your strengths, abilities, and needs for further improvement and training)
- a personality test (to determine your personality type based on characteristics like judging and perceiving, sensing or intuition, thinking or feeling, or introversion and extroversion)
- an interest test (to explore your interests usually in six areas including enterprising, conventional, investigative, social, realistic, or artistic)
- value test (to determine whether you prefer solitary work or frequent interactions with colleagues, the salary you want, is prestige important to your job, etc.)
And, for those who see themselves in the information technology and communication sector, the SFIA framework is the number-one assessment tool. By taking the SFIA test, you’ll be able to determine which of the 102 SFIA professional skills you have, at what SFIA levels, and get recommendations for further training.
- Explore Options
Once you have your skills and strengths determined, you should do research and identify the career types that best work for you. You can start by making a list of industries or SFIA job descriptions based on your assessments or make a list of advancement opportunities you want in your career and then use those to add more industries worth considering.
Next, do detailed research by gathering basic information about each of the industries and careers on your list. Think about the common benefits, training, and educational requirements, qualifications, and average salary of each job description. Now you can see that you have a pretty long list.
So, to narrow it down, you’d better seek professional help – preferably from a professional competency management company like SkillsTX. Also, you could use social media platforms to check company reviews and what others are saying about the advantages and disadvantages of working in that specific field.
After you have your list of possible careers narrowed down, you should explore and experiment through: taking a course, finding an expert in the industry, applying for a part-time job, taking an internship, participating in volunteer work, or conducting an informational interview.
- Make an Action Plan
Finally, collect all the information and create an action plan in which you should include your level of training, education, volunteer work, employment history, and any other work-related experience. Make sure you also note down your certificates, diplomas, and licenses, as well as the results of your SFIA test and other self-assessments.
Then, make short- and long-term career goals you want to reach before achieving your major or ultimate career goal. For example, you may need to add some training or education courses to finish so as to reach your ultimate goal. Also, you have to think about some challenges you may come across and how to overcome them.
To sum up, having a specific career plan as part of your professional development plan is of utmost importance. Luckily, with the help of the number one SFIA and competency management company – SkillsTX – you can successfully achieve your career goals.
