The Importance of a Personal Career Development Profile

Make personal career planning a priority.

A personal career development plan provides a roadmap to your professional life. It showcases your potential to future employer and provides guideposts for continuing professional growth. The plan profiles your strengths and weaknesses, and inventories your challenges and opportunities. Moreover, it outlines the tactics and strategies that will help you realize your career goals. An up-to-date profile demonstrates a level of career commitment that employers value.

Benefits

The personal career development plan helps you identify and define your career path and put actionable goals in place to achieve your end objectives. If you are honest in your assessment of your skills and abilities, it helps you determine how to concentrate your efforts. You can share it with coaches, mentors and current and future employers. It facilitates their understanding of the steps you have already taken, the progress you have made, and where you plan to go next. Beyond a simple resume, the development profile demonstrates a proactive interest in your own next steps and a candor about your challenges. They will be better equipped to help you help yourself.

Features

The personal development profile may contain the following elements:
• Current resume
• Past and current job profiles and descriptions
• Target job with description as wells as skills and education required
• SWOT Analysis: The SWOT identifies strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and challenges (threats).
• Training and Development Plan: The plan identifies training and development activities that will leverage strengths and address weaknesses. It includes a list of accessible resources such as mentors, training courses, books, etc. Write your specific goal and the date by which you will accomplish the goal.
• Progress Report: List of major milestones and accomplishments.

Execution

• Access your skills and abilities. If you prefer to take a facilitated assessment, your human resources representative may have a provider who can assist you.
• Match your skills to career options. The assessment may suggest certain careers. Consider your current career goals as well as recommended alternatives.
• Compare your assessment to the required skills.
• Determine what you need to pursue your career goals, i.e. training, education, mentors.
• Outline a phased plan to help you achieve your goals.
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Format

You can maintain your profile on your hard drive, but investigate online alternatives. One of the existing social networks may suit your purpose or you could create a personal profile web page. Many search recruiters prefer to work with candidates who have a 'Linked In' page that showcases comfort and familiarity with current technologies.

Success Factors

• Periodically revisit your profile to update your progress.
• Find mentors and coaches who will be realistic about your capabilities and push you to reach your goal
• Stay current on the requirements of your target job. Make sure you get the required training, education and experience.
• If you maintain an online profile, you will want to establish levels of security that prevent certain page views.

References

• Personal Development Training: Writing a Personal Career Development Profile