Helpful summary
- Why You Can Trust Us: At MentorCruise, we've helped numerous individuals find mentors who assist in creating effective career development plans. Our case studies highlight how mentees like Joris Zierold and Michele Verriello achieved their career goals with mentor guidance.
- Why This Is Important: Creating a career development plan helps you gain clarity on your goals, enhance skills, boost job satisfaction, and increase adaptability in a dynamic job market.
- Action Points: Identify your current position, set clear goals, perform a gap analysis, create a detailed plan, and measure progress regularly.
- Further Research: Explore additional resources on MentorCruise to find mentors specializing in your field and to gain further insights into effective career planning.
Need help creating a successful career development plan?
Where do you see yourself in 5 years? It’s an overused job interview question, but it’s also a relevant one. Do you want to be in the same position 5 years from now as you are today?
Career development is important for individuals who want to succeed in their profession. The only way to effectively maximize your potential is if you create a plan.
Join us in this MentorCruise guide as we discuss career development and teach you ways to devise your plan.
Why listen to us?
We have first-hand experience guiding individuals toward their dream jobs. At MentorCruise, we've assisted many clients through personalized mentorship, helping them achieve career goals. Our mentors provide unique insights to enhance your career planning.
Our case studies highlight the impact of mentoring on career growth. Mentees have gained confidence, advanced in their careers, and achieved their goals faster than anticipated. MentorCruise's network of over 300 mentors offers tailored guidance, ensuring each mentee's development plan aligns with their specific career aspirations.
What is a career development plan?
Also known as a career progression plan, a career development plan is your personal roadmap detailing your career goals and the steps on how you can achieve them.
Career development involves evaluating where you stand now compared to where you want to be.
And if you haven’t started, now is always a good time to begin creating a career development plan. It should be a process that starts as early as your first year of college.
What are the benefits of creating a career development plan?
Career development helps you get noticed by your future employers, compete in the job market, and grow within the organization.
Setting clear objectives
Outlining clear objectives is a guaranteed way to help you focus and produce the best possible results. Make sure that your goals are realistic and that you track your progress toward them as well.
Raising productivity
A good career development plan will streamline your work. Unambiguous goals provide you with the means to focus on what you are producing.
Knowledge transfer and retention
To truly progress in your chosen career, you must have people in positions of influence who can inspire and coach you. Their coaching will help you set specific goals. Our platform, MentorCruise, has an extensive catalog of mentors who specialize in various fields, such as data science, customer relations, and artificial intelligence, among others.
We have hundreds of mentors, and at least one of them is bound to be the right fit for you!
How to create a goal-oriented career development plan
Be sure to follow these steps to create a goal-oriented career development plan for yourself.
1. Know your current position
A report from Inc. Magazine said that most people choose the wrong career path. Part of the reason for this failure is that most people don’t spend enough time getting to know themselves.
The first step is about identifying where you are right now in your career, allowing you to reflect on your current skills and strengths.
Ask yourself questions, such as:
- What are my past experiences?
- What are the things I am passionate about?
- What skills and talents do I have?
- What excites or motivates me at work?
- What energizes me? What drains my energy?
- Do I have a particular calling in life?
As you ponder on and answer those questions, you must also note your current position in your field, such as whether you are a college graduate or interested in pursuing continuing education.
2. Know where you’re headed
Identify your destination by brainstorming, developing more specific goals in the form of concise statements, and thinking about where you want to be in the next 10 years.
Michele Verriello knew what he wanted. His goal was straightforward yet ambitious. He wants to grow as a software engineer and land a role in a major tech company or an exciting startup. What he learned from his mentor from our platform, including how to build a roadmap to success, surprised him, as he was able to land an internship at Tesla.
3. Perform a gap analysis
At this phase, you are now ready to create a gap analysis. This will determine where you are now and where you aim to be. To craft your gap analysis, make sure to research your goal career, consult with seasoned professionals, rate your qualifications, and identify gaps.
Consulting with seasoned professionals was exactly what Regis, a mentee on our platform, did. He signed up with MentorCruise and worked with his chosen mentor, Scott La Counte, a UX designer and writer, who provided him with exceptional feedback on his work and helped him improve it.
4. Create the plan
Now that you know the skills you need to develop to advance in your career, it is time to devise a plan. This step involves taking your list of education, experiences, and skills you wish to gain over the next few years and devising a concrete plan to achieve your career goals.
For example, you are a software engineer looking to become a technical lead within the next three years. Your career development plan might include:
- Setting clear goals
- Assessing current skills and interests
- Continuous learning
- Gaining experience
- Networking
- Seeking feedback and mentoring
- Career advancement
- Tracking milestones and adjusting
5. Measure your progress and be ready to calibrate
Once you’ve created the plan, it’s time to execute. The last step is keeping track of whether your implementation aligns with the timeline you assigned yourself in the previous step. Then, figure out how to measure progress in your career, and update your goals accordingly.
Leah Marcus is a notable example of someone who successfully updated her career goals in response to unexpected events. She shares her story to The Muse, about how she went through several jobs, including consulting, UX design, and even missile defense before she became product manager of sales technology at Trunk Club.
Best practices for creating a career development plan
- Individualized Assessment: Begin by conducting a thorough assessment of your skills and interests
- SMART Goals: Set clear, specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals to provide direction and clarity for the individual's career progression.
- Continuous Learning: You can’t reach your goals if you stop learning! Keep up the momentum and study the key skills you need to get to where you want to be.
- Regular Review and Feedback: Schedule regular check-ins to review progress, provide feedback, and make any necessary adjustments to the career development plan to ensure alignment with evolving goals and objectives.
- Mentorship and Networking: Try to get mentorships from relevant experts in your field, particularly from MentorCruise. Go to industry events and network so that you put yourself in a better position to receive new opportunities.
Achieve successful career development with MentorCruise
Creating your career development plan won’t be easy, but with the tips we’ve mentioned in this article, we’ve given you a good starting point.
It’s a good idea to talk to people in your industry before you make any fixed plans. Browse our site to find highly-vetted career mentors and industry professionals who can help you move your career head.
Get started today. Sign up at MentorCruise.