Five Phases to the Career Development Process

Posted March 27th, 2013 by Carroll King Schuller

“Your chances of success are directly proportional to the
degree of pleasure you derive from what you do.”
—Michael Korda

Do you know what careers are best fitted to you and your unique personality?

Are you uncertain about your career options?

It may sound odd, but we have the least self-knowledge of the things that we do well. Too often we assume the things that are easiest for us to do are not worth much, not realizing that these things feel easy because they tap into our unique talents. These are the places you need to spend the most time exploring as you search for the best career options for yourself.

For your work to be satisfying, it must be compatible with your personality. As you set out to start your career or switch careers, you need to work within a career development process to evaluate who you are and discover which careers best match your strengths, talents, and values. Once you have identified a good career match you will be ready to implement strategies to achieve career satisfaction in the job that is right for you.

Working within a career development process is the best method
to lay out who you are and discover the career that is best suited for you.

Five phases to the career development process:

1. Assessment — Start by assessing yourself. Develop a clear understanding of yourself, your aptitudes, abilities, interests, ambitions, resources, and limitations.  You will assess your work history, your personal life, and your childhood interests to identify the activities that you love to participate in. You will take personality tests and strengths assessment tests to identify your talents and the areas that you easily find success. This step requires that that you take a deep look at yourself and make tough choices about aspects of your life that you are willing to change. Be sure to take time out to focus on your general well-being so that you are at the top of your game.

Skim information off the top, take the things from the profiles that are the most obvious.  For example, if you take MAPP or Strong-Campbell you might want to just take the top jobs or the highest percentiles.  It is very important that you look at the very top scoring professions or jobs that show up.  Are they in distinctly different areas business, science, mathematics, etc.  You might find 3 areas.

If you are looking at Myers-Briggs or MBTI or strength finder you will want to look at the description and take a few key descriptors.  In compiling this information you may begin to see some patterns.  If for example you look at MBTI type jobs you will see that each type has jobs that work with that personality.  That is not an exact science.

Just a note, if you have any learning differences, you have strong compensatory skills and that is not going to show up.  In that case you have to go back and look again at your interests.

2. Explore the Best Choice — Keeping in mind the results of your personal assessment, begin developing a thorough knowledge of the requirements and conditions of success, advantages and disadvantages, compensation, opportunities, and prospects in different lines of work.
3. Identify Your Best Match — Match your personality and strengths with the right job. Use what you learned about yourself and the different types of careers to identify the jobs that are your best match. The jobs that most closely match your unique personality will bring you the most job success and satisfaction. Now that you are considering a new career, are there any gaps in your skills and the job requirements that you need to fill in? Look at educational and certification programs that will make you more marketable in your new career.
4. Develop a Purpose Statement — Develop a purpose statement that will guide your career development activities. Your statement should identify who you are what you do. This statement will guide you in the next phase as you set your career objectives and develop your plan for success.

5. Set Your Objectives — Develop objectives and a plan of action for achieving your career success and satisfaction. Break your purpose statement up into a plan of concrete, measurable actions that are easily accessible and holds you accountable. Research has shown that information that is accessible or has recently been used is easier to retrieve and motivates individuals to follow through on tasks. Seeing your goals accomplished is rewarding in itself, but consider adding a little positive reinforcement as you accomplish each of your objectives to give yourself an added incentive.

We are most successful when we are being ourselves and doing what we love.

Want a creative partner to work your career development process?  
Contact Carroll King Schuller at Organic Blueprints (www.organicblueprints.com or 804.288.0099).