A person’s life changes once he starts working since it takes him to an altogether different world. He will meet different kinds of people and along with his core domain skills; he might be required to work on his interpersonal skills since no work happens in a silo.
With each passing day, you gain experience and you start charting out your career development plan. That is the start of your goal making strategy and normally any working professional needs to work on his short-term, medium-term, and long-term goals. Short-term goals are the goals that one can achieve in the next couple of years (maybe next 5 years or so). An ideal example could be clearing a competitive exam so that you can achieve an edge over others. Medium-term goals could be goals that are far-sighted and should be achieved over a bit longer period of time (more than 5 years and less than 10 years). An example could be jumping from a technical role to managerial role by securing an MBA qualification from a reputed B-school. Long-term goals would be impacting your life the most since they are mostly based on output from medium-term goals. The time duration could be around 10+ years; an example could be starting a business and stepping into the shoes of an entrepreneur.
As seen from the discussion above, one thing is clear that the person needs to have some clarity of what he wants to achieve and how can he make his dream a possibility. Any wrong step in the career management process can take your flourishing to a backtracking mode. Organizations also need to play a vital role as the right set of teams needs to interact with the employees on a regular basis and make sure that the work being assigned is aligning to his goals. If this is done, employees would be more motivated at the workplace and results can be achieved faster.
Technology is having a far-reaching impact on our lives and the impact it has on our work is no different. Working professionals need to be updated with the latest technology trends and they should make sure that their work is more or less aligned with these trends. If up skilling of domain skills is not done, your skills would become outdated and switching to a better job may become impossible. Your growth in your current organization might also stall since your colleagues may have developed better skills on the latest technologies. Hence you should always include up-skilling in your career management plan.
Along with relevant teams talking to employees, organizations can also engage in career planning & career development companies. They specialize in that domain as they would have interacted with people from different fields and different experience levels. Hence their interaction with employees can help them attain clarity in their thoughts and ensure that their goal planning is not biased or based on someone’s views e.g. There is a possibility that you set your goals according to what your teammates (with similar experience) have set and setting goals in this manner is incorrect.
To summarize, career management is the most important part in anyone’s work-life and self-introspection along with timely guidance & planning can do wonders to your career. Remember, as far your career is concerned you need to fly and not crawl, so give wings to your career!