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Assess Your Interests
What kind of work do you want to be doing in one year? In five years? Career planning can help you achieve your goals. Career planning is the process of determining what you want from your career and putting steps in place to help you reach your goal. A comprehensive career management booklet has been developed to assist you in creating a long term career plan. You may download this booklet, which is titled "Putting It All Together" (Word format). As you build your career plan, it is important to identify what you like to do and what's important to you in both your work and personal life. People tend to excel in fields or jobs that hold their interest and are compatible with their priorities. What are your interests and priorities? Think about how and where you like to work, what you like to work on, and the kinds of people with whom you enjoy working. Make a list of your personal and professional priorities. Use these questions to help you get started: - Do you like to work on a changing variety of projects, or would you rather have a set of ongoing responsibilities?
- Do you like to work with numbers, data, and details, or do you prefer to be involved with concepts, ideas, and the big picture?
- Do you like to work directly with customers, or do you prefer to work behind the scenes?
- Is it important to you to work close to home, or are you willing to commute? Are you willing to relocate to another city, state, or country?
- Is it important to you to have your own private workspace, or are you happy working in an open environment? Are you interested in telecommuting?
- Is it important to you to have a consistent work schedule, or do you like to work different hours each day?
Knowing how you like to work and what's important to you helps you to identify the right opportunities for you when they become available. Now, take the next step in developing your career plan: Identify Your Strengths
Identify Your Strengths
What do you do really well? What stands out about you? Managers hire people based on what they can offer the organization, so it's important for you to know your strengths. It's also important to know where you can improve. Learning new skills and expanding your knowledge helps you add to your list of strengths and grow as a person, both of which can help you advance your career. Your strengths can include your skills, experiences, talents, and personal characteristics. For example, your list of strengths might look like this: - Intelligent
- Innovative
- Learn new tasks quickly
- Good analytical skills
- Great sense of humor
- Like to work under deadline pressure
- Have solid knowledge of all areas of accounting
- Have five years of experience as an accounting officer at Bank of India
- Have working knowledge of multiple office and accounting software programs
- Have worked in many parts of the bank—have broad understanding of the business
- Good public speaker—earned Competent Toastmaster Award from the Team Bank of India Speaking Network last year
Now think about where you want to learn and grow. Would you like to improve your skills at a particular task, or learn more about a topic? Your list of areas for improvement might look like this: - Want to learn about managing people
- Need to improve my writing skills
- Want to learn more about finance project management
- Want to improve my internet skills
Now that you know your strengths and development needs, you can look for career opportunities that capitalize on your strengths. At the same time, you can take advantage of development opportunities, such as training classes or leadership opportunities available through Team Bank of India , to develop your weaknesses. Now, take the next step in developing your career plan: Setting Goals Setting Career Goals
Once you've identified your interests, priorities, strengths and weaknesses—you know who you are. What are your next steps? To manage your career, you have to know where you want to go and have a plan to get there. That means setting some goals. There are several different kinds of goals. You can set career and development goals that: - lead to personal growth
- enrich your current job until new opportunities arise
- prepare you for promotion
- help you make a lateral move
If you don't have a clear sense of which direction your career should take, you can set exploratory goals. Exploratory goals can take the form of internships, inter-unit assignments, cross training, or simply networking with people in other units. Here are some general guidelines to use when setting your goals: - Develop goals with different time spans: three months, one year, five years
- Be as specific as possible
- Communicate your goals to those who can help you reach them
- Let your goals be flexible; change them when your circumstances change
- Plan short-range, mini-goals that build on each other and help you reach your long-term goals
- Keep motivated; this will help you power your way to your goals and keep working at them
Make sure your goals are clear, well defined and carefully spelled out. Review your goals and ask yourself the following questions: - Is your career goal clear? Does it express a clear, specific idea of what you want to do?
- Is your career goal realistic? Do you have the confidence to accomplish it?
- Is your career goal achievable? Do you have the skills, abilities and time to attain the goal?
- Is your goal measurable? What result in time, money and/or quality are you aiming for?
- Are you committed to obtaining your goal? What are you willing to change to make the goal a reality?
- Have you solicited the support you need from your supervisor, family members and teammates?
An important next step is to continuously evaluate your effort. Career Goal-Setting Exercise Use this exercise to help you get started: Write goals for each of the areas of improvement you defined for yourself in " Identify Your Strengths." Be sure to make your goals realistic, specific, attainable, and measurable. Here are some sample goals: Personal Growth
– I will take two writing classes at the bank in the next six months.
– I will spend two hours each week exploring the Internet.
Job Enrichment
– I will take two management training classes at the bank in the next three months.
– I will ask my manager to give me additional project management responsibilities during the next year. Promotion
– I will achieve the position of unit manager in my organization by the end of this year. Lateral
– I will move laterally from being an Accounting Officer to being a Finance Officer by the end of next year. Exploratory
– I will network with two employees in three different finance units each month for the next three months. Now it's time to start reaching your goals. See Create a Career Plan for tips on getting started. Create Career Plan
Now that you have identified your career interests, priorities, strengths, weaknesses, and goals, the next step is to create a career plan. Your career plan keeps you focused on your goals. Use this exercise to help you get started writing a career plan. Select a short-term career goal and write an action plan for achieving it. Your plan should include: - specific steps you need to take to reach the goal
- measures you will use to determine whether or not you were successful
- the date by which you want to reach the goal
For example, if your goal is "Within one year, get a first-level manager position in an accounting unit," your action plan might look like this:
Specific Steps
- Tell my manager about my goal and ask her/him to help me by giving me more management responsibilities during the next year
- Take two management training classes in the next three months
- Begin networking with managers in other accounting units
- In nine months, begin looking for open manager positions in accounting units
Success Measures and Completion Date
Success will be determined by whether or not I am in a managerial position one year from now | | As you continue to manage your career over time, you will find that you need to continually put forth the effort to make the plan happen. To stay motivated and to maintain your momentum, make a thirty-minute appointment with yourself each week. Ask yourself on a regular basis: - How did I build and acquire new skills and expertise this month?
- What's the most important thing I learned about myself, my targeted field or job, and the bank?
- How many contacts did I make to help me explore new opportunities at Bank of India? Who are my new contacts?
- What professional relationships did I consciously work to improve?
- How would I describe my progress toward my goal(s)?
- Did I complete any action plan steps or goals?
- Have any additional action steps surfaced that I need to include in my career plan?
It's important to remain flexible and to adjust your career plan as your circumstances, interests, and situation change. Now that you've got a plan, it's time to carry it out! See Execute Your Career Plan for tips. Execute Your Career Plan
Now that you have a career plan, it's time to identify career opportunities that are strong matches for your skills and interests and that can help you reach your career goals. When you find an opportunity that interests you, think about what you can offer the hiring organization. Remember, managers hire people to solve problems and help accomplish organizational objectives. It is important for you to understand the organization's objectives and to be ready to position yourself as someone who can help achieve them. To learn about the organization's objectives, talk to people who work in the organization or in similar ones. Get information on what the organization wants to accomplish and what challenges it faces in reaching its goals. Find out what makes a person successful in that organization. Does this match your abilities? Are you interested in this kind of work? In other words, would you make a good match for this organization's needs and would a job there be a good match for your interests and abilities? Once you have identified a number of good matches, you can create a strategy for presenting yourself as a candidate for openings in these organizations. Here are some steps you can take: - Make sure your resume is current and reflects your skills and abilities in the best possible way
- If possible, ask to be involved in projects your group works on with your targeted organization(s). This is a great way to demonstrate what you have to offer.
- Take advantage of opportunities to network with managers from your targeted organizations. Team Bank of India offers excellent networking opportunities with managers from across the company.
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