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The question of “What do people value most in life?” is very valuable. This question is as important as it is valuable in terms of directing our future. According to research, the answer to this question for the vast majority of employees has been determined as family first and then career. After all, you spend so much time at work that the people there become part of your family over time. In addition, the institution you work for also has an important place in your life. Of course, these findings are more valid for generations X and Y. With the changing world, the expectations and working styles of companies and employees, especially generation Z, have also changed. Studies conducted especially after the pandemic show that young generation employees want to follow a career planning path based on digitalization and develop their careers differently.
On the other hand, planning for this is very important. Of course, in order to achieve this, we first need to establish the definitions in our minds. In this context, it should be noted that when it comes to career planning, everyone thinks of learning a foreign language or getting a master’s degree. Yes, both contribute to the development of your career, but planning is a different thing. Just as states have institutions and boards that make strategic plans, people should also have similar strategy centres. Of course, we should establish these centres in our minds first.
Career Planning Examples
So, in order to make a career plan, we should ask ourselves the following questions when we finish high school or at the latest in our university years.
- What do I want to be or do in the future?
- What do I need to do to become the person I want to be?
- Can I allocate time or budget for this?
- How much do I need to improve myself in this regard?
- Do I have time to improve myself?
- More than time, do I have enough faith and desire to improve myself?
Everything starts with asking and questioning. The questions above may seem abstract to you or may not have made a place in your mind. You will understand better what we mean when we explain it with examples below.
We are just beginning to understand globally that not everyone will be happy as a doctor or an engineer. At this point, the importance of career planning has begun to be understood worldwide. It is precisely at this stage that we need to briefly explain what career planning means. What we are talking about is actually a process. In other words, we call this the journey of self-development by determining one’s goals according to one’s strengths and weaknesses and what one likes as a result of knowing oneself. Here, it is necessary to touch upon the importance of questions and questioning.
Career Planning Definition
Let’s clarify the questions we mentioned above while making career planning a bit more and categorize them.
– Determining Your Goal: What we are talking about here is not something superficial like where you want to see yourself in ten years. You should set long-term and short-term goals for yourself. For example, in the short term, you can say “I will study software at university” and in the long term, “I will be a software developer”.
– Getting to know yourself by analysing and determining your strengths and weaknesses: In other words, in the short term, you expect a person who wants to study software-related departments to have an interest or love for mathematics, for example. If you are not good with numbers, it would be right to set a more verbal goal for yourself. On the other hand, if you are good with numbers and coding or have a special interest in these subjects, it would be logical to follow this path. If you understand your weaknesses well and walk towards your strengths, you will have easily overcome this stage.
– Developing skills through education: After setting short and long-term goals for yourself, you need to develop yourself and your skills on that path in order to walk towards this goal. In other words, it will be very important for the future for a person who wants to be a software developer to take coding lessons and develop themselves in this way. There are many paid or free courses on platforms such as Youtube or Udemy, and it is possible to improve yourself in the subject you want by taking advantage of these opportunities even during summer vacations or in your free time.
Career Revision
At this point, do not think that the goals you set while planning are indispensable rigid goals. The agile working principle, which is very popular in today’s business world, becomes important at this point. In other words, for example, you see that you are not progressing well on the path to becoming a software developer or your area of interest has changed.
What you need to do at this stage is to manage to change your direction. When making plan, consider reviewing and changing your goals and plan when necessary. You will not become a software developer, but for example, you will become a math teacher. This is possible. Those who manage to be agile will also stand out from others in the teams they join in their business lives with these aspects.
– Networking and the ability to establish a network: In the digitalizing and rapidly globalizing world, people focus a lot on being successful in their workplaces and career ladders. For this, they progress by knitting the stages we have listed above stitch by stitch. However, the most skipped part in these processes is the issue of establishing a network, that is, a human network, at each stage.
In other words, for example, it is very important to leave a good impression in a company you worked at during your summer vacation at university, to get the numbers of a few people from there, or to add them to your connections on Linkedin. The networking has become increasingly important in the business world recently. People with high social skills-EQ attach importance to these issues and seriously network. This is an important stage that should come to mind when it comes to career planning.
Work and Private Life Balance
– Establishing a balance between private life and work: This title is a subject that is generally neglected. However, when we look at the details of failure in career or unhappiness in life, we definitely come across imbalances between work and private life. Of course, this balance is not as easy to achieve as it is written.
In other words, if a person gives little importance to work and much to his private life, or does the opposite, he cannot be happy and successful. The most basic rule of establishing the balance here is the principle of “not taking work home, work home”. In other words, neither think about work-related issues after leaving work nor home issues after coming to work. Let this be a measure for you and try to follow this rule. You will see that after a while, you will have achieved the balance.
When planning your career, you should not confuse the purpose with the means in your private life. In other words, being successful in business life should not make you greedy for more. Our ultimate goal here should be to “be happy” through being successful. Otherwise, there is no ultimate end in both business life and career. If you do not focus on the happiness of yourself and those around you in your life and focus only on work and career, after a while, no success will be enough for you. Moreover, you will realize that you are becoming even more unhappy over time.
The Ultimate Goal of Life
Yes, it must be admitted that success or job satisfaction alone in your career will not bring happiness. As we mentioned above, if you establish a healthy balance between your private and business life and then determine happiness as your ultimate goal in life, you can be sure that you will achieve happiness both in your business life and in your private life. Otherwise, you will become one of those very successful but incredibly tense and constantly unhappy executive types in your circle.
To sum up, career planning determines your long-term path in your business life. While determining this path, it works on your strengths and weaknesses, allowing you to develop yourself in line with your competencies and walk on the career path where you will be successful. On the other hand, if you determine your main goal in your life as being good person and happy in the future with this planning process, you will really be both successful and happy.
