Creating Your Ideal Career Strategy

Last updated on August 10th, 2024 at 11:23 pm

I have come across a talented professional who has been in an organization for several years but never given much thought to what he would like to achieve with his career.

Whether due to lack of dedicating some time to define his dreams and come up with a strategy to realize them, he, one way or the other, misses key opportunities.

I’m talking about golden opportunities that could have promoted him many times over the course of those years but instead still remain in the same role he was originally hired for. While he’s moderately happy on the surface, he knows deep down, he could be achieving much more.

If this sounds like what you are going through…

Chances are you probably want to work in a position that is enjoyable, interesting, and satisfying while also pushing you to reach your best potential. The good news is that your current position can offer you a lot of options. All you have to do is recognise them and devise a plan of action to achieve where you want to go.

In this post, we’ll lay out a practical method you can employ to consider how to realize your full potential in your job.

Taking Control of Your Career

Some people believe that they have no control over how their careers will grow. After all, you cannot obtain a position, a promotion, or a project until someone else grants it to you.

On a certain level, that is accurate. However, you are ultimately responsible for your actions and your level of success in life. Great careers don’t just happen; you have to plan for one if you want one that challenges and excites you.

You can achieve this by following these steps:

Step #1: Review Your Motivators, Values, Weaknesses, and Strengths

Building a professional career strategy is similar to building a house.

You must lay a strong foundation first, then gradually climb the ladder to success.

You need to assess your talents and limitations, as well as your values and what drives you, before you do anything else.

Consider your skills and shortcomings as a starting point. What do you excel at in your current position? And what abilities have you demonstrated in previous roles? What, on the other hand, are your weaker points or the jobs that you find most challenging?

Recall that not all strengths and shortcomings are immediately apparent. For instance, you might excel at bringing people together, be excellent at persuading people to agree with you, or possess a gift for motivating others to support a new idea. All of them are positives!

However, a Personal SWOT Analysis during this initial step may be beneficial to your career development.

Tip: If you’re struggling to identify your strengths, you may find Talentplat helpful to work you through identifying your key strengths and weaknesses and help you stay on top of your career goals.

Next, consider what drives you professionally:

What activities, endeavours, or positions do you currently find exciting?
What kind of role might inspire you to pursue in the future?
What fascinates you about your current job, your coworkers, and your company?
Which responsibilities you don’t have at the moment but would like to have?

Step #2: Understanding Your Comparative Advantage

Finding your comparative advantage comes once you have a clear understanding of your motivations and strengths. When compared to those around you, this is something you can do really well. It’s a strength, skill set, or trait that only you possess that will benefit your company.

Knowing your comparative advantage is crucial since utilizing this quality or talent can help you advance in your profession. Keep in mind that your comparative advantage may not always be what you do best; rather, it may be something you excel at in comparison to others and that satisfies a need for your business.

If you’re having trouble identifying your personal competitive advantage, consider your most recent performance evaluations. Has your manager consistently given you praise or recognition for a certain ability, trait, or success? If so, this could reveal some information about your competitive advantage.

You can also reflect on the strengths you noted in step 1 and seek feedback from coworkers, clients, or even friends.

Step #3: Make the most of opportunities by conducting research on your choices.

There may be numerous prospects for growth and promotion in your company and in your current field, whether you can see them right away or not. However, it’s up to you to recognise and seize these chances.

PEST analysis of your own can aid in your analysis of the technological, sociocultural, political, and economic developments that could impact your profession in the future. With the help of this, you may spot potential places for growth and opportunity as well as trouble spots.

The Personal SWOT Analysis you completed in step 1 can be reviewed as well; like, What opportunities might be accessible to you that are based on your strengths?

Maintain awareness of the resources your company can provide you, and be sure to benefit from any training or development opportunities. Do you, for instance, offer tuition for appropriate studies? Or would you benefit from attending any future trade exhibitions or conferences?

You can also get assistance from those around you in spotting chances. For instance, a career mentor with expertise might be of great assistance to you, especially if that mentor is someone you respect and trust.

Step #4: Develop Expertise

You ought to have begun to form an image of yourself by this point that focuses on your strengths, interests, sources of motivation, and possibilities.

You must now acquire the knowledge required for the following stage. Determine the experience level, skills, certificates, or degrees you’ll require to fill the function you’d most like to have in order to build expertise. (This is strongly related to the previous stage because there may be lots of chances to gain knowledge within your own company or sector).

Tip:

Make sure you have the training and credentials necessary to take advantage of your prospects rather than relying on luck or on someone “taking a chance on you.”

Step #5: Network

Developing a career strategy should include professional networking. You must get to know the people who can assist you in achieving your goals since they can only assist you if they are aware of you.

Keep in mind that you can network with coworkers from various departments as well as vendors and experts from other businesses or industries. LinkedIn and Twitter are a great networking platform for professionals.

Plan your networking activities accordingly in order to take advantage of your opportunities, and remember that networking is a two-way thing; you will profit most from it if you also strive to assist others.

Step #6: Analyze Current Options

Once you’ve considered the “big picture,” developed your knowledge, and established your networking, it’s time to consider the immediate, tactical possibilities that are open to you.

Is there a forthcoming initiative that would allow you to highlight your values and showcase them to relevant people in the industry?
Someone in your department is leaving or taking a leave of absence, is that correct? If so, would you kindly offer to step in to fill the void?
Is there a difficult assignment you could complete to put your abilities to fresh use?
Can you modify your employment in any manner to gain the experience you desire?

Try to come up with a list of alternatives that will help you get started in the proper direction.

Step #7: Put everything together

You should be able to respond to the following inquiries at this point:

What are my strengths?
What are my major weaknesses?
What drives me the most at work? What do I do that actually brings me joy?
What do I possess that is unique? What distinguishes me within my company?
What education, training, or credentials must I obtain in order to advance and succeed?
Which of my coworkers, employers, or suppliers is best suited to support my advancement?
What choices do I now have that might enable me to either use my skills in a novel way or truly stand out from the crowd?

Analyze what this data says about you and what you want from a career by setting some time aside. After that, proceed and take the following step using this knowledge.

Step #8: Moving forward

It’s time to start creating the individual professional goals that will propel you forward now that you’ve determined what you want from your work and have addressed some fundamental concerns about what’s important to you.

Setting both short-term and long-term goals is crucial. Short-term objectives are ones you can complete in the coming weeks or months. In the coming years, long-term objectives should be feasible.