A practical guide to creating a career plan

No matter where you are in your career, creating a career plan is the one thing that will help you achieve your career goals in less time. You can either choose to stumble through your career until you land the job of your dreams by chance, or you can plan ahead and create your career path to get to where you want, when you want.

First things first, determine what you really want

Wanting to advance in your career is a great goal, but quite vague. Besides, career advancement may feel like a distant dream if you are not even sure whether you are in the right industry or job. Even though deciding what you really want out of your career is such a simple task, it can be the most difficult thing ever for certain professionals. Here is what you can do to decide what your career path should be:

• Take a career or work personality test to find direction
• Work with a career coach to find something you will be happy in
• Shadow someone in your company to learn more about what they do
• Ask for an informational interview from a professional in your desired field
• Read a self-help book that gives great career development advice

Next comes the analyzing part

Once you have figured out what you want to do in your career, you need to understand what you need to do to get there. You can do this by referring to online job boards. Find 8 to 10 job postings for the job title that you want to achieve. You can even select job postings from multiple industries or just stick to one industry. Once you have found enough job postings, you can start analyzing them to determine the skills and experience that you would need to gain to qualify for the role. Create a table with the headings: Education, Experience, Transferable Skills, Specialized Skills, Training, Certifications, Licenses, and Abilities. Then, you can feed the requirements in each job description to your table. Once you have gone through all the descriptions, you will come up with a document that will show you exactly what you need to qualify for the role.

After that, you need to take a good look at your skills inventory

Great! You have a list of all the things you need to be. Now, it is time for us to see how many of these qualifications you already possess. You can refer to your master resume for this. Or you can simply create another one of those tables and start filling in your own qualifications. Once you have completed the list, you can start checking off the items that are matching in both lists. This will help you identify which specialized skills, transferable skills, training, or certifications you need to gain or learn to measure up to the demands of employers.

Finally, you can start creating your action plan

You have a clear idea of what you need to have to qualify for the job of your dreams. Now you need to figure out exactly what you need to do to get there. Whatever you do, you need to have a detailed action plan outlining each step. Let's look at an example.

You want to become a Project Manager and all employers require you to have the Project Management Professional certification. What you need to do is simple. You need to enroll in a course to earn the certification. There are some questions you must ask yourself:

• Which institutions are offering the course?
• Which mode of learning is the most suitable for me, physical or online?
• What is the cost like?
• How much time do I need to invest in the certification per day?
• How long will it take until completion?
• What are additional factors that I must take into consideration before enrolling?

Once you have all the answers to these questions, you will have your action plan.