What is career development?

What is career development? Typically speaking, we only really think about our career in terms of job seeking and while this is certainly a large part of it, it’s not the only part of it. That rush of panic when you find a job that you want to apply for and you realise that your résumé hasn’t been updated in 15 years and you have no idea how to respond to selection criteria (we’ve all been there!) is not a pleasant feeling! Effectively managing your career can help you prepare for these unexpected opportunities.

Career development is a lifelong process and it combines managing your education and training, your work experience and career progression, your network and community interaction together with your recreational activities to ensure that your life is balanced between work and home. It takes effort but once you are aware of the importance of consciously managing your career, the fog surrounding your future begins to lift and you are able to identify your opportunities in work, education and networking more clearly.

Statistics indicate that we spend up to 75% of our time in work related activities – travelling to work, attending work, talking about work, complaining about work, worrying about work. When it takes up so much of our time, it’s really important that we get this right, and yet many of us have a reactive approach to managing our careers.

In order to stay on top of our career development, we need to be proactive. Instead of waiting for an opportunity to arise and then panicking, we need to be prepared for it and if possible, seek and create it. Instead of dusting off the résumé and freaking out over having to update it quickly, we should maintain it as we progress through our career: every time we achieve something at work, we should document it so we aren’t left racking our brains when we are trying to demonstrate our skills and experience.

I can feel your eyes roll at the administrative perfection that proactive career development seemingly demands. Perhaps this is a plan for the perfect world as life can get so busy it is difficult to keep up with the immediate demands. However, it is worth it to keep your documents up to date with your current achievements in the long run, as this doesn’t only make our résumé current, it also allows us to build a strong, conscious awareness of our skills and capabilities which actually improves our work productivity and performance as our confidence grows. This in itself can lead to new opportunities!

Moreover, this conscious awareness of your experience and skill development is important because when you are aware of where you are at professionally speaking, it allows you to be more mindful of opportunities for training and development, for achieving experience, and for building networks with people who may be relevant to the direction in which you are heading.

Debriefing is an equally important part of career development and it is often overlooked. Talking to a career practitioner (or trusted third party) about what is going on at work can help you work through any issues or roadblocks, help you transition through promotions and manage success, as well as  identify areas for improvement and seek opportunities for growth and building visibility. All that complaining about work can actually be really beneficial to your career development! Who knew?! Career counselling isn’t just for managing outplacement and for high school kids looking to choose a course (although it’s great for that too): talking to someone else about your career goals, frustrations, successes and failures is really important as soundboarding your ideas and verbalising your experiences – both good and bad – can help you to clarify what you want to achieve and how you can achieve it.

Career development as a lifelong process might be daunting or seemingly eye rolling in tedium, but it isn’t a journey we take on our own and it can lead to achieving the goals that we set out to smash.