Career Development
The career development process is a gateway through which one can sharpen their capabilities by exploring or making informed decisions about their career. It plays a significant role, as one can identify career interests and passions towards a job, thus making it easier for them to prosper in an area of interest. One must have strategies and a career plan to develop one’s career. It can, therefore, be termed the process by which employees use available resources to enhance their experience and advance their career development. This should be done before joining an organization to propel one’s interests.
Personal Career Interests
Career interests encompass a range of activities, including thinking, building, creating, helping, organizing, and persuading. These critical skills in career development elevate the interview respondent’s experience and ability to navigate their career. In a workplace where colleagues share the same ideologies, mobilization can work to achieve or reach a specific goal through team building. When people in the same workplace share similar interests, they tend to exhibit similar traits and characteristics, which in turn helps elevate one’s career interest by motivating them or boosting their morale (Vondracek et al., 2019).
Moreover, helping others and persuading people at the workplace allows one to gain more courage and confidence in their career. When one has support from the workplace, there is a high chance of performing better, which in turn helps them in their career development. Lastly, organizing also plays a vital role in establishing career development. When one is organized, one’s plans tend to work smoothly, thus motivating a person to work harder.
Results and Reactions
Results and reactions have played a significant role in career development. Through hard work and determination in pursuing my career development, my career interests have boosted my confidence to take on more challenges and achieve positive results. Personal concepts, motives, and values in career development have helped yield more positive effects and a more effective career plan.
Being admired by the interview respondent’s fellow workmates shows a good employee determined to achieve their career development (Vondracek et al., 2019). On the other hand, their reactions to career development have shown tremendous results, as the interview respondent is committed to pursuing their career path to the highest level. Since an employee chooses a professional space for their actions and plans a professional advancement for their ideal, this motivates them to advance in the organizational hierarchy and to put the interview respondent in a leading position within their organization.
Tools for Career Development
Organization assessment is key to shaping an individual’s career path. It is a practical career development approach involving one-on-one coaching with professionals. However, organizational assessment programs are preferred by large companies and help identify employees’ potential for career advancement. The interview respondents’ results and reactions fit them because they are on the right track and willing to do more at their best level.
Considering that competition is always stiff in career development, the interview respondent has to work extra hard to meet their targets and plans. They were not surprised by their results because they were on the right track. Having laid out proper strategies and implemented them in the career workspace, for example, using a self-assessment tool to gauge oneself, has yielded positive results.
Career Development Experience and Experience with Tools
In any career development program, there is a need for one to have passion for what they do to achieve their objectives. This, in turn, aids one in reaching their short-term goals step by step. Having strategies and goals allows one to know what is achievable and what is not. Therefore, it is essential to have both short-term and long-term goals.
Shorter plans in career development help one achieve minor goals, which, when fostered, may result in long-term goals. Having a short-term goal helps an individual curate the desired ideas they expect to achieve within the first few years of their career and later formulate an ultimate plan. To achieve short-term goals, they must be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound (Vondracek et al., 2019)—a system used to evaluate short-term goals. Moreover, navigating through career exploration helps individuals identify advantages and disadvantages and choose the path that will yield the best career results.
The interview respondents’ experiences with career development have helped put them in a better position than before. Being able to engage physically or in hands-on tasks related to their career. This engagement enables individuals to interact with people of diverse ethnicities and backgrounds, fostering workplace unity.
Having one-on-one mentorship with experts in the same field helps boost an employee’s knowledge and experience, making them more marketable. Moreover, engaging with these experts helped the interview respondents develop networks with professionals and experts in their industry, leading to potential future job opportunities. Lastly, their experiences have helped them to determine whether their career interest is a good fit. Discussions with experts have given them confidence in their career development.
Critical Incidents and Viable People
There are always positive and negative happenings on the path to career development. Some negative experiences may be termed critical incidents, including witnessing a mass casualty, losing a workmate, violence at work, or a sudden chronic illness. These events may hinder one’s performance in the workplace or an individual’s ability to cope.
However, some of these critical incidents are manageable because they are temporary, which may include responding to and reporting issues affecting a person. Viable people can work in such conditions and further their career development. In some extreme cases, it serves as a measure of life or death. It tests whether the employee can continue pursuing his career development plan. Employees should be able to overcome critical incidents to meet their expectations and goals.
Having future aspirations is essential in molding oneself into what one aspires to be. The interviewee’s future aspiration is, therefore, to be at the top of the organizational hierarchy. As employees set goals to achieve desired positions in the workplace, there is a dire need for future aspirations (Vondracek et al., 2019). Moreover, aspiring to a lifetime of employment acts as a form of job security, as one is assured of having opportunities for career development. Lastly, the end goal of the interview respondent’s future aspirations is to see their career development grow a notch higher.
Synthesizing the Information
According to the information about career development, tools used, and research methods, there is clear evidence that when the SMART system is used, it can help achieve short-term goals. When short-term goals are achieved, it motivates one to strive for the ultimate goal, which is to reach the pinnacle of career development.
Moreover, self-assessment and organizational assessment have bridged a gap in identifying one’s strengths and weaknesses in the workplace. Lastly, when developing a career, one should identify tasks, simplify them to manageable tasks, and then implement them. This can help them advance in their career development.
Reference
Vondracek, F. W., Lerner, R. M., & Schulenberg, J. E. (2019). Career development: A life-span developmental approach. Routledge.