Career development is the lifelong process which involves managing learning, work, leisure and transitions to move towards a personality. It determines a preferred future for an individual. Career development provides someone with the choice of selecting a career and subject to undertake in future.
The study of career development in organizational development plays a significant role in determining how individuals manage their careers within the organization. In today’s competitive environment more employers are looking for ways to facilitate career development and encouraging employees to drive their careers.
In the personal settings career development is the constellation of psychological, sociological, educational, physical, economic factors that combine to influence the nature and significance of work in the lifespan of an individual. The development of the career involves the creation of a career pattern, decision-making style and integration of life role and self-concepts.
Career development is all about the development of yourself and your skills. These skills set to add value to the organization and your career development. Career development and skills development of an individual is the key to workplace success.The process of development and learning of skills requires identifying the skills needed for mobility and then successfully seeking out training or on-the-job opportunities for developing those skills.
Developing your career in the right way is like growing a tree over time. Your career startup is like a seed of a tree with great potential. The seed is planted in good soil, get watered properly and sprout through into an area with decent sun and without too many other trees choking out the sun then you can begin to grow indeed. Similarly in a case at the beginning of your career development you join a good company and get a good starting job, work for good bosses and in a region with the strong economy then definitely you can develop your career.
For the development of a successful career, you need to focus initially on building a healthy stem (technical skills), versus trying to reach high and wide (that opportunity will come with time).
While growing your stem, you are burying your roots (character) broad and profound – creating a stable foundation to hold you upright for the long-term. Over time you thicken your stem – it becomes a trunk, which supports your bough, so you can stand up to even the strongest of winds. Finally, you reach your boughs (leadership skills and professional relationships) high and wide.
Your career development process involves few common issues during your growth that can leave you stunned or collapsed.
• First of all, most of the time you like many others want to be promoted as quickly as possible and define career success as timeline between promotions. The negative consequences of this mistake are that through rising ranks at a highly accelerated rate you will miss the chance of mastering the functional/technical skill required for success. So the promotions at a highly accelerated stage must have to be avoided.
• Your second mistake which must have to avoid at the beginning stage of career development doesn’t get promoted too slowly. You need to focus on growth over a given period and accept the promotion after learning the skills required for the career success.
• You need to avoid the mistake of keeping your work confined to a narrow discipline to be successful in your career. So do your future self a favor, and try to get involved in a decently wide variety of work as early as possible in your career.
• Another mistake which must have to be avoided at the beginning stages of career development is developing expertise in too many areas, i.e., jack of all master of none. Your leadership skills, business acumen, and interpersonal skills can all branch far and wide, but your technical expertise should stay somewhat focused on a small number of disciplines.
• If you’re dishonest, hypocritical, or just a royal jerk, it doesn’t matter how technically capable you are, or how many business relationships you have. So never develop or cement your character.
Another five mistakes which you need to avoid at the beginning of your career are as follows:
• We are surrounded by an endless number of options all of which seem to be very attractive so for the development of your career you need to avoid lack of focus. You must have to focus on the desired professional career and subject area for successful career development.
• Lack of planning, focus, mismanagement and unprecedented events can lead to mental and physical exhaustion, but you need to avoid burnout.
• The system (school, university, company, culture, family) imposes a series of restrictions upon us so in the working environment to make your career successful avoid becoming a boss be a friend of you co-workers.
• HR /student administrator is your support system, not the manager or your professors so you need to avoid considering them your professor.
• Avoid Favor for long-term benefits to short-term output. At the beginning of your career, you need to consider both.
All these mistakes must have to be avoided for the successful career development at the beginning stages.