Tips For Female Professional Career Development
We all start life with hopes and aspiration. Right from when we were little, we had formed in our minds what we’d like our careers to be. Whether we understood it, we held those thoughts.
For some of us, our dreams became reality. For the rest of us, we gained more clarity and insight and had a change of what we wanted and became something else.
So, yes, now we have careers. How do we go from being beginners to experts or even thought leaders in our industries? I’ll be sharing with you the rest of this in this diary.
Career means a job pursued as your life’s work. It is a professional engagement that results in financial remuneration. Career development is the time or effort you put into building and growing that career. It is a process and a journey.
Also, career development involves managing your career, setting goals both long term and short-term goals, getting training, mastering skills and abilities and working with coaches and mentors all to scale up your career growth and get defined progress. It is a process; it is professional growth so you don’t get stuck.
A lot of us choose a career path but make no plans for growth. You don’t want to put in so much work and get little or no progressive movement or reward for it. So, career development is essential.
Remember that you are the driving force of your career and anything you want to do is possible. Be unlimited.
Stages of Career Development
Career development is a step-by-step process. It will involve transitioning.
Self-Assessment. The first step to career development is self-assessment. Self-assessment can be described as self-awareness. It is you knowing where you currently are at in your career, recognizing your strength and weakness.
Research. The next step is research and exploration. This stage opens your eyes to the possibilities available in your industry. If you are seeking to pivot, it is at the stage you make findings about your next industry.
Preparation. Preparation gives you the needed insight and clarity. This step is also the goal setting and strategy building stage.
Implementation. The next step is the implementation stage, where you unfold the laid-out strategies you had at the preparation step. At this stage, you have career goals and strategies have become more specific, detailed and properly defined at this stage.
Decision-making. The decision-making step is the last step. The journey to this point has set you also as a professional and a thought leader within your industry. Getting to this point may make you feel you have gone as far as you can. There is much more. How about you pivot?
Tips for Career Development
These tips are vital for career development.
Create lists.
Take courses to become certified.
Network, connect, and collaborate with those in your industry.
Be patient. It takes time to grow.
Embrace mentorship and get a career coach
Be confident and be a team player.
Seek learning.
Stay in touch with industry news and events, and pay attention to trends that may influence your job in the future.
Engage people and be a visionary.
Career development doesn't happen in a day. It takes time to build a formidable career.
Also, do not compare your journey to that of another. Always reflect on how well you have come on the journey.
Keep track of your vision. Be unlimited. Continue building skills that may take your career to the next phase.