Saturday, April 2, 2011

Career planning

Career planning is the process of one’s life work and involves evaluating abilities and interests, considering alternative career opportunities, establishing career goals, and planning practical development.

Career planning is the deliberate process through which a person becomes aware of personal career related attributes and the lifelong sense of stages that contribute to his or her career fulfillment.

Organization has a vested interest in the careers of their members and career planning and development programs help them to enhance employees’ job performance and thus the overall effectiveness of the organization.
The term career has a number of meanings. It can be viewed from different perspectives. In popular usage it can mean advancement or upward movement o linear progression. For example, he is moving up in his career. It means a profession (for example, he has chosen a career in medicine). It is a lifelong sequence of jobs. It is sequence of positions that a person has held over his or her life. It means stable employment within a profession.

Super and Hall (1988) define career as a sequence of positions occupied by a person during the course of a lifetime. A career is all the jobs that are held during one’s working life. This is the objective career. 

From another perspective, a career consists of the changes in values, attitudes and motivation that occur, as a person grows older ( Davis, 1996). This is the subjective career.

Both of these perspectives, objective and subjective, focus on the individual. Both assume that people have some degree of control over their destinies and that they can manipulate opportunities in order to maximize the success and satisfaction derived from their careers.

Career is often confused with job. Experts make difference between a career and a job. According to them, a career is a perceived sequence of attitudes and behaviors associated with work-related experiences and activities over the span of the person’s life.

Whereas a job is what a person does at work to bring home a paycheck, a career is being engaged in a satisfying and productive activity. Thus a career involves a long-term view of a series of jobs and work experiences.

For some people their jobs are part of a careful plan. For others, their career is simply a matter of luck. Merely planning a career does not guarantee career success. Superior performance, experience, education, and some occupational luck play an important role. When people rely largely on luck, however, they seldom are prepared for career opportunities that arise. Successful people identify their career goals, plan, and then take action. To put it another way, successful careers are managed through proper and careful career planning.

 People who fail to plan their careers may do so because they think that their company or their boss will assume that responsibility. Or perhaps they are unaware of the basic career planning concepts. Without an understanding of career goals and career paths, planning is unlikely. A career path is the sequential pattern of jobs that forms one’s career. Career goals are the future positions one strives to reach as part of a career.

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