Find a good company, get promoted, and work there until retirement. This was basically the career plan of people in previous generations.
But times have changed. While a pretty straightforward career path is still acceptable nowadays, there’s nothing wrong with exploring more of what’s out there. Opportunities for learning and development abound!
It can be overwhelming—but don’t worry. A professional development plan can help you carve out your own path. Not sure where to start? Keep reading to learn more about this plan, why you should have one, and how to create one.
What Is a Professional Development Plan?
A professional development plan (PDP) is an action document that specifies the steps that you’ll need to take to reach your goals. Ideally, you should draft this even before you get to college. But it’s never too late! The next best time to draft it is now.
Why Do You Need One?
Having a professional development plan is crucial, no matter where you are in your career. It’s your guiding light whenever you’re working towards some kind of goal. Perhaps you want to:
- Scale your business;
- Move up the career ladder;
- Get a raise;
- Switch careers;
- Have a good work-life balance.
In all these cases, a PDP would be useful. If you feel stuck despite your efforts, you should definitely make one.
Creating Your Professional Development Plan
Follow these steps to create the foundations for a solid professional development plan:
Step 1: Assess Your Assets
“What are you working with?”
This is the primary question that you must be able to answer during this step. It means assessing your interests, knowledge, skills, and qualifications. Here’s why each of them is important:
- Interests. To sustain satisfaction and success in your career, it’s important that what you do is somewhat aligned with what you love or what you believe in. This prevents burnout in the long run;
- Knowledge and skills. Every career requires a general set of knowledge and skills. Knowing what yours are is important in narrowing down your options or in determining gaps;
- Qualifications. There may be certain barriers to entry in the industry where you want to prosper. Therefore, having an inventory of certifications that you may have will be useful.
It’s just as necessary to try to learn more about yourself. Some personalities fit better with certain professions. Try to take the OCEAN Test and the DISC Personality Test for this.
Step 2: Create Your Goals
“What do you want to achieve?”
Your goals are important because they give you something to look forward to. They also give your actions a purpose so every move you make takes you closer to the professional career that you dream of.
When creating goals for your professional development plan, make sure to set:
- Long-term goals. These can be several years ahead. For example, you may want to double your salary in ten years;
- Medium-term goals. These should be something you can achieve in several months or a couple of years. For example, you may complete a six-month certification program relevant to your industry;
- Short-term goals. These must be doable in a few weeks or a couple of months. For example, you may try to finish two modules in your certification program within three weeks.
These are just general examples to demonstrate the differences between the three. Depending on what the goals actually are, you can have more than one long-term goal, as long as they don’t contradict each other. Meanwhile, medium and short-term goals should break down their long-term counterparts into more manageable chunks.
Use the SMART criteria when creating your goals: make sure they are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. This ensures that you’ll be able to move forward with the next steps easily.
Step 3: Create Strategies
“How do you make it happen?”
Based on the goals you’ve set, create a plan of action to help you attain them. Review what you wrote in Step 1. What gaps in your competencies, interests, and qualifications exist that are preventing you from reaching your goals?
Whether it’s learning more about improving productivity or getting a mentor, your strategies should concretize the steps by which you’d get to your goals. Ideally, you should list them down under each short-term goal. Assuming you did the assignment right, short-term goals should collectively fulfill medium-term goals and long-term goals.
Step 4: Determine the Resources Needed
“What resources do I need to get started?”
Your time and effort are both necessary, but they’re not enough. You’ll also need other resources too, such as:
- Professional networks;
- Courses and workshops;
- Professional social media platforms;
- Educational institutions;
- Money.
You may already have access to some of these. In that case, it’s all a matter of accessing them. If you still have to work on gaining access, you’ll need to add that to your action plan.
Step 5: Create Deadlines
“When should you get it done?”
Creating a timeline to achieve your goals will put some pressure on you, making sure you get things accomplished and actually achieve your long-term goal. Depending on the goals you’ve set, either weekly or monthly deadlines may be more appropriate.
If the goal itself is tied to a specific date (for instance, if you only have access to a course for six months), take that into account as well. Again, make sure that the timeline you create is doable.
From here, just update your professional development plan as you go! If your goals change, or if you’ve thought of a more effective action plan, feel free to make changes to it as well.
Set Yourself Up for a Successful and Prosperous Career
Setting your sights on a goal is essential in making sure every action you make is meaningful. But having a dream career isn’t enough. With a solid professional development plan in hand, you’d be able to create a clear pathway to where you want to be career-wise.
But remember that like any plan, it’s not meant to be static. Feel free to update it from time to time to reflect changes in skills, priorities, and direction. Only then can it truly serve its purpose in building a successful professional life.
