Owning your Career Development

The Ownership of your Career and its development belongs to YOU.

While knowing that you are the keeper of your Career is reassuring, it can also be terrifying because it requires 100% accountability on your part and will require you to step outside of your comfort zone at times. Not only do you have to figure out what you want your professional career to look like, you also need to determine what strategic decisions need to be taken to get you there and what development opportunities will help you succeed.

Once you have determined your career path, you need to compile a list of common soft skills, technical skills, craft knowledge and responsibilities that fit under the various stages of your career. You should also be looking at the expected level of interaction required for each item you listed. Does the skills or responsibilities increase or decrease as you go throughout your determined career path? Based on this, you can determine what development opportunities you need to go after now and what can wait.

Then you should start to compile a list of resources that can help you grow in those areas. For the purpose of this article; let’s view Career Development Resources in the following buckets:

• Resources that exist within the current parameters of your job.
• Resources within your organization that are not easily identifiable.
• Resources that you can utilize outside of your organization.

Resources that exist within the current parameters of your job

These resources tend to be the easiest for people to identify and the resources that they rely on the most.

• Does your company have a Training and Development team that you could reach out to? Do they provide career coaching and counseling?
• What do the current Training and Development offerings look like?
• Are there conferences or local events that your company will pay for you to attend?
• Does your company have access to external Training Materials, Facilitators and Platforms that you can use?
• Does your company offer tuition reimbursement?

Resources within your organization that are not easily identifiable

• Regular feedback from your teammates- You should be periodically asking the people around you for feedback and suggestions regarding your improvement areas even if your company has an annual performance review process.
• Subject Matter Experts- Almost all companies have them and they typically produce thought leadership. Are you reading their articles and attending their speaking engagements? Have you considered reaching out for mentoring conversations ?
• Non-Traditional Education Reimbursement- Outside of traditional tuition reimbursement, does your company offer reimbursement for licenses or certifications? Will they pay for you to attend preparatory classes for these endeavors?
• Other Location Resources- Are there resources that exist within other offices that you could utilize i.e. training sessions, subject matter experts, mentor programs, etc. Content might not be shared automatically across offices but that does not mean that people are not willing to share it with you if you ask.

Resources that you can utilize outside of your organization

This is typically the one that people don’t utilize enough and it can be extremely beneficial-there are no limits to these resources!

• Can you utilize volunteer efforts to grow in certain areas?
• Are there webinars, training sessions or events that you could utilize in your local area? Does the local community center or other organizations offer training? For example, I recently started attending free Learning and Development events provided by an organization’s local chapter that I found through meetup.com.
• Do you have mentors outside of the organization that you work in? I recommend having a diverse group of mentors. I have male and female mentors in Education, Strategy and Engineering who are at different stages of their careers.
• Are there free resources available on the internet that you can use? Some companies have made career development plans and training sessions available to the public. Some very well-known and credible universities offer MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) that they have made available to the public. I personally have taken courses from coursera.org on psychology and have found them very helpful.
• Websites like Muse, Onet and Lynda.com and the websites of organizations dedicated specifically to my craft have been extremely helpful for me.
• Some organizations that produce great Learning and Development content also post free videos and Presentations across their different social media channels. That’s why I recommend following all of their channels.

Next, think about how to best use those resources. How do you integrate them into your daily work and activities? For example, I decided I wanted to develop in my ability to provide personal branding services. At that time, I didn’t have the opportunity to do so in my current role with folks that had a few years of professional experience under their belt. I knew that the need for that skill would only grow in my chosen career path.

I started meeting with one of my mentors on a regular basis who has strong branding experience.  I would do my own research about common roadblocks people face while building their professional brand and created solutions for those problems. I would walk my mentor through my recommendations and she would provide input and insight that helped me refine my process. Now I do personal branding work for people and the value that they have told me it’s provided in their career has far exceeded my original goal of personal development.

So often, people rely solely on the development that they are offered rather than crafting their own and they don’t feel completely fulfilled. This is because the story that is being told with that career development plan is being told by someone else who has to think of what’s best for all parties involved and not just you. Want to take charge? Start by figuring out what YOU need and how to incorporate any opportunities around you to get there.

I am a HUMAN CAPITAL ADVOCATE and I love networking and providing counseling on Career Management and Development and Personal Branding.

If you have other suggestions in regards to career development resources people should consider when creating their own career development plan; I would love to hear them!

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