No matter where you’re at in your career—on the hunt for your first job, settled into a role, or seeking new opportunities—a career development plan can help you get organized and focus on where you want to go.
If you want to build a future-forward mindset, then keep reading to learn how a career development plan can help you, plus a step-by-step guide on making your own!
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What is a Career Development Plan?
First, let’s get into the details. After all, it’s tough to build a career development plan if you’re fuzzy on what one is—so let’s break it down. Career development is an ongoing process that allows you to grow personally and professionally.
While these plans are traditionally used as tools for a company to highlight growth opportunities for employees, it’s also something that you can make independently to help you decide what you want to accomplish in your career and break down the way you’ll go about this.
What Should You Include?
A career development plan should be a written document that helps you keep track of your progress towards your professional goals. To do this, your plan should include:
- A summary statement
- Short-term goals
- Long-term goals
- Current skills
- Developing skills
- Strengths and weaknesses
- Resources for growth
- Action items (like continued education or training)
Why is Career Development Important?
Career development helps you stand out in front of employers, become a competitive candidate in today’s job market, and grow within a company. Planning allows you to identify your career goals, determine what steps are needed to achieve them, and create your individual pathway toward success.
Even though career development plans take time and effort to build, plus determination to follow through, it’s important to be intentional about your professional growth—otherwise, you risk becoming complacent in your role or getting left behind the competition.
This is something other job seekers are noticing—according to research by Zippia, 76% of employees are looking for opportunities to expand their careers! If you want to stay ahead of the curve, it’s important to start your own plan for professional development as soon as possible.
The Benefits of Creating a Structured Path
If you’re hoping to advance in your career, having your own personal development plan can be highly valuable. Some of the main benefits include:
- Clear expectations: A structured plan will give you clarity on your goals, allowing you to make informed decisions and move with intention to achieve your aspirations.
- Learning opportunities: By identifying areas where you can grow, you’ll be able to focus on targeting specific skills and find education or training opportunities that will further your development.
- Increased motivation: With a newfound sense of direction and purpose, you’ll likely feel more engaged and committed to your professional goals.
- Competitive advantage: The results of your professional development can make you a more attractive candidate for promotions, new job opportunities, or even a career change.
- Improved work performance: As you enhance your skills and focus on your career growth, you’ll become more productive in your day-to-day role and possibly even take on additional duties.
6 Steps to Create a Career Development Plan
As you work on your career plan, remember that your path is going to be unique to your skills, development process, and goals—and your plan should reflect your individuality. Follow these steps to create a plan that aligns with your specific needs and goals for the future.
1. Establish Your End Goal
To know how you’d like to develop professionally, it’s important to first understand where you want to go in your career. Consider what you’d like to do more of, what skills you’d like to learn, and whether you want to rise to the top of your company, find a different opportunity, or transition careers entirely.
Ask yourself questions like:
- What is your dream career?
- Where do you want to be in five to 10 years?
- What makes you most excited about work?
- Are you fulfilled in your current career?
Once you’ve identified your dream job, you can research that role by looking at open roles for the position and seeing what the responsibilities, qualifications, and requirements are. Compare this to where you’re currently at.
Are there any certifications or further education required? Do you need a set amount of experience in certain roles first? Does your current role provide a career path to reach this position? This can help you establish a foundation for your self-assessment.
2. Conduct a Self-Assessment
Once you’ve identified the requirements for your dream role, you should go through each individual point and rate your current skills, education, and experience against them. Rate on a scale of 1-5, with 1 representing no match between you and the requirement, and 5 meaning that you perfectly meet the requirement.
This will allow you to prioritize growth in certain areas, target the most important skills, and recognize the largest gaps in development. Other ways you can assess yourself include looking through past performance reviews or taking a skills assessment to discover your strengths and weaknesses.
You can also consider the following questions:
- What skills or competencies do you need to develop to achieve your career goals?
- Are there any gaps between your current abilities and the requirements of your desired role?
- What personal or professional habits or behaviors might be holding you back?
By clearly identifying these areas for improvement, you can create targeted goals and action steps to address them effectively.
3. Set Development Benchmarks
Even though you have a long-term goal in mind, there’s plenty of little steps you need to take before achieving your end goal. Break down the milestones you’ll be aiming for and give yourself a timeline to achieve these.
The SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound) goal template can help you set realistic benchmarks. When setting your goals, follow these guidelines:
- Specific: Your goals should be clear and well-defined, with a specific outcome in mind.
- Measurable: Ensure that success with this goal is measurable and that you’ll be able to track your progress.
- Achievable: Set goals that are challenging yet realistic, based on your current capabilities and resources.
- Relevant: Your goals should be aligned with your overall career aspirations and contribute to your long-term success.
- Time-bound: Establish a timeline for achieving each goal, with specific deadlines to keep you on track.
You can measure progress by things like receiving a positive performance review, getting a promotion or raise, or learning a certain skill. For example, if your long-term goal is to run a company, then some of the benchmarks can be gaining stronger leadership skills, finding a mentor or other forms of networking, and getting a position where you manage your own team.
4. Identify Action Items to Hit Short-Term Goals
Now that you’ve set your progress benchmarks, or short-term goals, it’s time to break this down even further by listing the specific actions you’ll take to meet each goal and when you plan to complete each step.
So, if one of your goals is to learn a new skill, your action items can include completing a certification course, attending training workshops, reading a relevant book, or researching how to use new platforms.
Some of these action items may need to be completed before you can begin working on others. Arrange your list in chronological order and estimate the amount of time it should take to complete each item to help you determine your projected deadlines.
5. Organize Everything into One Document
Part of an effective career development plan is organization. If you can’t easily refer back to your action items, benchmarks, and goals, how will you be able to hit them? Once you’ve gathered all the necessary information and devised a plan to achieve your aspirations, create a document or spreadsheet to keep track of everything.
The format of the plan doesn’t necessarily matter—it’s all about finding the simplest method for you to track and measure your progress. As long as you have a concrete plan in place that you’re committed to following, you’ll be good to go.
6. Reevaluate and Adjust as Needed
Just like most things in life, your plan shouldn’t be static—as time goes on, you’ll likely need to rework deadlines or certain action items. Your career plan is a living document, so it should be consistently updated to reflect any changes in the industry, your interests, or your personal circumstances.
It can help to do monthly or quarterly check-ins with yourself to make sure you’re staying on track and see whether your plan still aligns with your long-term goals. And while you do these check-ins, make sure to celebrate any wins!
Celebrating success will reinforce your behaviors and habits and help you stay motivated throughout your journey. Making progress toward your goals will require hard work, but measuring your progress and celebrating wins will keep you more consistent—but remember that life can be unexpected, and your plan is flexible. It’s okay to change direction!
Take the Next Steps Toward Your Future
Having a clear vision of where you want to go professionally is the best way to get there. Now that you have the tools needed to create your own career development plan, it’s time to put it into action! Start building your plan for the future and identify your opportunities for growth.
Is a new career part of your long-term plan? We can help! Check out the Insight Global job board to find open positions that will bring you closer to your goals.
by Patrick Glynn 
by Brita Long 