Creating a Professional Development Plan
Learn more about the brilliant professional that has been with his company for numerous years, Jack, in this interview. In spite of the fact that Jack is excellent at his work, he has never given much attention to what he would want to accomplish in his professional life.
As a result, he regularly loses out on important chances because he hasn’t taken the time to clearly define his goals or develop a plan for achieving his goals. Because of his ability to see opportunities, he would have been promoted multiple times throughout the years if he had accepted them.
It turns out that Jack is still working in the exact position that he was employed for initially. On the surface, he seems to be content, yet he is aware that he is capable of much greater accomplishments.
Is this something you’d be interested in pursuing as a profession?
Your desire to work in a profession that is enjoyable, challenging, and satisfying; as well as one that encourages you to reach your best potential, is likely to be realized. You may have a plethora of possibilities in your present position, which is a positive development. To go where you want to go, all you have to do is recognize your obstacles and devise a plan to overcome them.
Here, we’ll go through a common-sense strategy that you may use to think about how to maximize your potential in your current or future professional position.
Career Management: Taking Charge
It is common for individuals to believe that their professional advancement is completely out of their control. In the end, you can’t acquire a job, a promotion, or a project unless someone else gives it to you, can you?”
Yes, it is correct on a certain level. But in truth, it is only you who can choose what you do and how far you go in life. Having a rewarding and challenging profession does not happen by accident. If you want to have a career that excites and challenges you, you must prepare for it.
Following are some guidelines to assist you:
Examine your strengths, weaknesses, motivators, and values as a starting point for this process.
It’s similar to putting together a structure while planning one’s career. You must begin with a strong foundation and gradually work your way up to the top of the organization.
Before you can accomplish anything else, you must first assess your own strengths and shortcomings, as well as your own values and the factors that inspire you.
Taking Control of Your Professional Life
Some individuals believe that they have no control over their professional progress. After all, you can’t receive a job, a promotion, or a project until someone else gives it to you, right?
On one level, it is correct. But in fact, what you do and how far you go in life is all up to you and no one else. Great professions don’t simply happen — if you want a career that excites and challenges you, you must put up the effort to make it happen for yourself.
The following methods will assist you in doing this:
Step 1: Examine your own strengths, weaknesses, motivators, and values to determine your next steps.
Developing a professional plan is similar to building a house. You must begin with a strong foundation and gradually work your way up to the top.
Before you do anything else, you must first assess your own strengths and shortcomings, as well as your own values and the factors that inspire you.
Starting with your own personal strengths and limitations is a good place to start exploring your options. What aspects of your current position do you do really well in? And, more specifically, what abilities have enabled you to flourish in past positions? As an alternative, what are your weakest abilities, or the things that you find the most challenging?
Take note that strengths and weaknesses are not always immediately apparent. For example, you could be exceptionally gifted at fostering peace within a group; you might be exceptionally skilled at persuading others to your point of view; or you might possess a natural ability to motivate others to support a new project. Every one of these characteristics is a plus!
In this initial phase, it may be beneficial to do a Personal SWOT Analysis.
Consider working through our Bite-Sized Training course on Finding Your Unique Strengths if you’re having trouble identifying your own.
After that, think about what drives you in your professional life. For example,
At the moment, what activities, projects, or jobs have you really enthusiastic about?
To achieve what sort of position in the future would you be motivated to work?
In your present role, your coworkers, and your company, what is it that you are interested in learning more about?
You don’t have any obligations right now, so what would you want to take on?
Tools such as Schein’s Career Anchors, Holland’s Codes, and the MPS Process might be useful in determining what kind of employment is most appropriate for you in this situation.
Additionally, this is a good moment to examine what it is that makes you happy in life — tools such as the PERMA Model and Ben-Happiness Shahar’s Model will be valuable in this analysis.
Last…
In the August 2008 edition of Graduate Connections, we introduced you to the “Next Stage” approach to professional growth, which demands you to “think ahead, look ahead, and… act ahead” of the stage you are now in.
If you want to pursue a career in academia, you’ll need to know what is expected of new faculty, how institutions of higher education vary based on their goals, and how the purpose of an institution may impact faculty duties and responsibilities. If you were to think “next stage,” you might consider participating in the Preparing Future Faculty (PFF) Program, which would introduce you to the full scope of faculty roles and responsibilities – including teaching, research, and service – and how the expectations for these responsibilities often differ in different campus settings.
Additionally, if you are considering a non-academic career route, such as becoming a scientific writer, policy analyst, or foundation executive, you will need to identify the skills and information you will need to acquire before taking the next step. Conducting informative interviews with individuals who are presently performing the sorts of work you want to do is an excellent approach of identifying your strengths and development needs as part of the process of developing a career plan.
Create an Individual Professional Development Plan (IPDP).
Whatever route you choose, we recommend that you develop an Individual Professional Development Prepare (IPDP) to assist you plan for your future. An Individualized Professional Development Plan (IPDP) is a written plan that outlines your professional objectives and the measures you must take to achieve those objectives. An IPDP assists you in focusing your professional development by producing a career “action plan” for skill development and career management. It gives a mechanism for you to record your progress via evaluation and reflection, allowing for continuing growth and development – and it is a wonderful tool you may use to identify, organize, and prepare for the next step. Get started with a planning template designed just for graduate students.
There are five major responsibilities.
Creating an IPDP consists of the following steps:
Describe your professional activities and positions. Describe your present tasks and responsibilities as a graduate student. Describe your teaching, research, and service activities, professional affiliations, participation with your campus or department, and undergraduate advisory responsibilities. Then classify each job and action into one of four developmental categories: discipline development, instructional development, career development, or organizational development.
Skills and knowledge should be evaluated. Make a list of your abilities and expertise. Identify the skills and abilities that you have gained. What areas have been appropriately developed, and which areas may benefit from extra learning? Make a list of your current abilities and knowledge, as well as any areas that need improvement in the IPDP’s four development categories.
Make a list of your goals. Prepare a list of your professional and personal objectives. Consider the question: Where do I wish to go? What aspects of my job do I wish to advance? Make a list of the general objectives you want to achieve in the short term (within the next year), mid-term (within the next 1-2 years), and long-term (within the next 10 years) (3-5 years). Determine how your objectives align with your knowledge and abilities. After that, you may assign each objective to one of the four developmental groups listed above.
Create a plan of action. Determine how you intend to go to where you wish to go. Create a list of the skills and information you wish to acquire, and then define the strategies or action actions you’ll need to follow to reach your objectives. It is beneficial to establish a timeframe for beginning and finishing work on your stated objectives.
Keep Track of Your Progress. Keep track of your progress by highlighting your achievements. Personal statements, input from faculty advisors, peers, and undergraduate students, your curriculum vitae, the results of your courses and/or research, and other examples of your work may all be used to track your progress toward the objectives you set for yourself. Revisit your objectives from time to time to assess if you need to acquire new skills or information in order to attain them. An academic portfolio is one approach of accumulating proof of your accomplishments.
Continuous self-assessment and reflection are essential components of a meaningful and efficient IPDP. Because professional growth is a lifelong endeavor, you’ll want to take time to assess your progress. Is your strategy aligned with your objectives? Are your objectives clear? Have you obtained the appropriate “proof” and recorded your progress in order to reflect new learning and growth? You may want to explore maintaining a diary, finding a peer with whom to discuss your progress, or forming a discussion/support group where you can obtain feedback.
Completing an IPDP involves a small commitment of time and work, but the return on that effort may be substantial. In addition to defining your future, an IPDP enables for future planning and reflection, and will assist you in charting your growth to assure attainment of the Next Stage.
What Is a Professional Development Plan and How Do I Make One?
Whether you want to accomplish a hard project or achieve a certain sort of employment, setting both short and long-term objectives may assist guide your actions throughout your career. A professional development plan may help you achieve those objectives by guiding you through defined processes. We’ll go through what a professional development plan is, how to make one, and an example in this post.
What is a professional development plan, and what does it entail?
A professional development plan is a list of measures to take in order to achieve your career objectives. A professional development plan may help you acquire detailed insight into how you might achieve your career goals, such as obtaining a new certification or finding a mentor who can provide you advice. Creating a professional growth plan is extremely useful while looking for work. You may have a clear grasp of how you want to handle the search and interview process if you define your objectives in a PDP.
A PDP may be made in a variety of forms. It might be a basic written text or a table with rows and columns. Use a template to assist you think about your career future and the objectives you’ll need to achieve it.
A personal development plan (PDP) should serve as a constant reference or touchstone, and it should be updated whenever significant milestones are reached. Keeping your PDP up to date helps you to create new objectives that will help you improve as a professional and as a person.
What is a professional development plan and how do you make one?
To make a simple, comprehensive professional development plan, follow these five steps:
Self-assessment
Goals \Strategies
Resources
Timelines
Self-assessment
A self-assessment is a method of evaluating your professional interests, expertise, and abilities. Making a self-assessment helps you to look at your present situation in relation to your professional objectives. You may pick areas in which you can improve to achieve your objectives after you’ve determined your present talents and interests.
Identifying your transferrable abilities might be useful. Many organizations look for transferable abilities in individuals, such as effective communication, collaboration, and leadership. Make a list of the software apps or computer programs you know how to use. Having technical abilities is crucial in every business as companies grow more reliant on computer systems.
Goals
Your professional development objectives should be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Timely). Using SMART objectives will make them more trackable, making it easy to update your PDP as you reach key milestones.
Make your objectives easier to attain by breaking them down into manageable stages. It’s a good idea to prioritize your objectives and put them in order of importance, with the highest priority first, so you can find them fast. It may also be beneficial to define objectives as short-, mid-, or long-term in order to establish more precise strategies to attain each one:
The word “short-term” refers to the next 12 months.
Within the following one to two years, we’ll reach mid-term.
Within the next three to five years is considered long-term.
Continue reading: SMART Goals: Definition and Examples
Strategies
The strategies in your professional development plan explain how you will attain your objectives. Experiential learning (learning by doing), exposure (learning from others), education, and reflection should all be on your list.
The bulk of your tactics should, in general, be experiential. This provides you with invaluable hands-on experience as you learn new abilities. A person interested in becoming a veterinarian, for example, may volunteer at an animal shelter as an experience technique to learn more about dealing with animals.
Here are some topics to think about when you design your strategy:
If your objective is to change careers, consider what education or certificates you’ll need and how long they’ll take to achieve. Investigate what kind of education and certification courses you may be able to take to help you achieve your objective.
If you need assistance, try contacting a professional source and forming a mentor-mentee connection. A mentor might be a seasoned colleague, a former employer, or a professor or educator.
If you need to improve your talents, you may be able to do so in your present position. You might request greater tasks from your boss to help you obtain the necessary skills.
What Is a Mentor?
Resources are areas where you may advance your career. They may provide courses or networking opportunities, and they have the ability to significantly improve your professional path.
Here are a few professional resources:
Institutions that provide continuing education
These organizations provide programs, conferences, and courses to help you learn more about various subjects. Many continuing education courses lead to a certification or degree, demonstrating your understanding of a topic or ability to conduct a procedure. Project managers, for example, may get a Project Management Professional certification, demonstrating that they can effectively execute a plan utilizing various approaches. You may be able to take lessons online or at a local college or institution.
Associations for professionals
Memberships are available from both local and national organizations. Being a member of an organization allows you to network with like-minded people and expand your professional network. You may improve your chances of advancement in your job by expanding your professional network.
Webinars are presentations given by experts and corporations on a certain subject, such as assessing industry trends or teaching a specific skill. A programmer, for example, may deliver a webinar on front-end development fundamentals. Because webinars are held over the internet, you may participate from anywhere. Based on your PDP, you may access a number of webinars.
Be precise while writing the resources part of your PDP. There may be tuition, fees, or time constraints associated with these resources. It’s critical to have a comprehensive understanding of your options.
Timelines
Your professional development strategy should constantly be evolving. It should evolve and develop over time to match your present work situation. When you attain milestones, alter strategy, or change objectives, it’s an excellent moment to revise your professional development plan.
An example of a professional development plan
Here’s an example of a professional development strategy:
Self-assessment
• Currently a specialist, but want to advance to project management.
• You have strong interpersonal and communication skills right now.
• I need to enhance my time management and leadership abilities.
Goals
• Increase my pay by 30%.
• Obtain a project manager advancement.
Strategies
• Find a mentor in management.
• Accept more duties at my present position.
• Attend a project management workshop.
• Take a minimum of two leadership courses.
• Acquire knowledge about specialized coaching strategies.
Resources
• Project Management Institute • Videos on various project management methodologies
Timeline
• In a month, ask to head a small project team.
• Find a mentor in two months.
• Enroll in project management courses within the next three months.
• Within a year, request a project manager advancement.
