3 Steps to Create a Successful Career Plan

Whether you’re looking for your first job after school, college, or university, or you’re already working and want to move up the career ladder, creating and maintaining a career plan can be incredibly useful. A well-thought out career plan can:

• make sure that each job move advances your career
• help you set realistic goals
• provide a way to measure your progress

A career plan will outline your current situation, clarify where you want to go, and help you find a way to bridge any gaps in experience, skills, or education. It’s a useful way to keep track of your career path and highlight when you need to alter course and make changes.

Here are three steps you can take to create a successful career plan.

1. Consider The Now, Your Future Goal, And How To Build A Bridge

Before you create your career plan, you need to decide what you want to achieve. What’s your ultimate career destination and how can you get there? The best way to answer this question is to consider your current situation, your desired future situation, and how you can bridge any gaps between the two.

  The Now

Where are you in your career and life now? Answer the following questions to build a clear picture of your current situation:

• What is your job situation? Are you employed? If so, what’s your job title? Are you a recent school leaver or graduate looking for your first job? Or as you out of work and mid job hunt?
• What qualifications do you have? This might be from school, college, university, an apprenticeship, or in-work training.
• What work experience and skills do you have? Skills might be soft skills like being great at working in a team, or technical skills like plumbing.
• What responsibilities and living needs do you have?
• What are your work preferences and values?

Answering these questions will provide you with a great starting point for your career plan.

  Your Future Goal

Your future goal doesn’t have to be years away or the culmination of a lifelong career. Instead, consider what your main career goal is right now. It could be:

• landing your first job
• moving into a new industry
• getting a promotion
• making sure your pension will allow you a comfortable retirement
• finding a new job with better salary and benefits

Gather as many details as you can about this goal. How soon do you want to achieve it? What would that first job look like? What would be a satisfactory pension pot or salary? What would a promotion mean for your life outside work? All this information will help you build a realistic career plan.

  Building A Bridge

You know where you are and where you want to go. Now it’s time to map a journey between those two points. Don’t worry about how long or overwhelming that journey may seem. Instead, concentrate on:

• the steps you can take right now
• any gaps you need to overcome, for instance, extra qualifications or work experience you need
• changes you may have to make to your life, such as childcare or location

2. Write Up Your Career Plan

With all that information in hand, you’re ready to write up your career plan for the next year. So what does that look like? While your career plan will be individual to you, there are key sections that are useful to include.

  Date

It’s important that you know when your career plan begins so you can set deadlines and timescales for your goals.

  Personal Overview

This includes your current status, for instance, computer programmer or maths graduate, your personal drives, and your intended career progression. For example, a self-motivated junior accountant seeking a more senior role with a company that shares my values.

  Who You Are As An Employee Now

This will include your education and qualifications, work experience, skills, and work preferences and values.

  Your Career Goals

This section will include:

• short-term goals (for the next three to six months)
• mid-term goals (up to two years)
• long-term goals (up to five years or longer)

Each goal should include the steps you need to take to achieve that goal, any gaps to overcome like developing a new skill, and a deadline for that goal.

As a jobseeker, your short-term goals might be to update your CV and apply for twenty jobs over the next month. Your mid-term goal could be to land a new job that offers better working conditions and an increased salary. Your long-term goal might be to have a secure position with a salary package that allows you to buy your forever home.

3. Measure Your Progress And Re-Assess

Creating your career plan isn’t the end of the process. As you achieve your goals, you can tick them off. If you reach a deadline without achieving a goal, you can re-assess, add extra steps, or extend that deadline. Return to your career plan on a regular basis to makes notes on your progress.

At the end of the year, look over your career plan to assess how far you’ve come and what you’ve achieved.

• Has your personal overview changed over the last twelve months? Maybe you landed that promotion or found your first job.
• Have you gained qualifications or developed new skills? How much extra work experience do you have?
• Which steps and goals have you achieved? How much progress have you made towards mid and long term goals?
• Which steps and goals are incomplete? Why is that? Were your goals unrealistic, have your priorities changed, or did factors out of your control get in the way?
• Are your goals still relevant? Do you want the same things as you did twelve months ago?

Answer these questions, re-assess, and draw up a new career plan for the next twelve months.

Wrapping It Up

While it’s possible to advance your career without a plan in mind, you run the risk of taking steps that don’t serve your long-term goals. Writing up a career plan that’s informed by who you are now, where you want to go, and how to build a bridge between the two, will help you stay on track, measure your progress, and re-assess if your career goals change.