While career development describes the short-term, specific actions you must take to reach your objectives, career growth refers to your long-term vision for your profession.
Development in Career vs. Expansion
The larger picture is career development, which is the general advancement of someone’s professional life defined by the several jobs and responsibilities you assume along your career path. On the other side, short term skill improvement helps one to advance their career.
Definition of career development
Career development is the general advancement of a person’s professional life including the several jobs and obligations over their career path. Although your career progress is easy to control, growth is a little more difficult since your surroundings and available chances might influence it.
Simultaneously, this allows you to define your professional development on your own criteria. While striving to be a CEO is perfectly fine, keep in mind that development is not necessarily vertical. Examining your career beliefs and how your work supports them will help you create a career development strategy that satisfies both personally and professionally.
Samples of Professional Development
Getting promoted to a more senior role—that of sales manager from sales representative.
moving from the tech sector to land your ideal career as a botanical garden gardener.
Starting your own nonprofit and assuming executive leadership.
Assuming leadership duties as a c-suite member and serving as your company’s chief technology officer.
What is professional development?
Although they are used frequently synonymously, the terms career development and career growth are really different. Consider it as if your career must be developed if you are to advance. Career development is the deliberate actions you take to improve your job skill set and equip yourself to manage both present and future roles.
Short term skill improvement helps one to advance their career. Your job development plan can call for learning a soft skill like good listening or a hard skill like programming.
Models for Career Development
Presenting ideas and guiding team conversations help to hone communication abilities.
completing Google-sponsored classes to earn a Google Analytics certificate.
earning a master’s in health administration by finishing a university-accredited program.
Creating a mentoring relationship with a more senior employee in your firm.
Why Development and Career Growth Are Crucially Important
Development in your job will enable you to maximize it and improve your well-being at several phases of your professional life. These are a few more benefits that highlight the need of investing mostly in professional development and advancement:
Having both short- and long-term goals to aim for can help you to stay concentrated on producing excellent work. This can also help you find meaning that keeps you involved at your job.
Deeper satisfaction: Considering your desired professional path will help you to be more deliberate about the roles you seek out. You will thus be more likely to choose a professional path that suits your tastes and ambitions.
Higher income: Your pay will be bigger the more you advance from the development of your career. A higher pay can result in financial stability, so allowing you freedom in choosing your future path.
Higher employability: C-suite leaders think artificial intelligence might replace as much as 56 percent of entry-level jobs. Being employable will depend on ongoing education and development as new technologies transform the workplace.
Strategies for Realizing Development in Your Career
Although the outcomes of your job development take time to show, having a plan in place helps you to make the process much more under control. These ideas will help you to hasten your professional progress.
Specify Clearly Your Objectives for Career Development and Growth
You can affect your career development more so the more you take responsibility for it. Consider your career growth strategy like the cornerstone of a house; the more precisely you build it, the more robust the resultant creation will be.
“While some career development happens naturally as you work and learn from colleagues, dedicating time to grow and expand your skill set can accelerate the speed of career growth and lead to new opportunities,” said Mike Hendrickson, vice president of tech and development products at e-learning company Skillsoft.
While striving to be a CEO is perfectly fine, keep in mind that development is not necessarily vertical.
Think about how your work fits your career values.
“Career development can, of course, include getting a promotion and becoming a manager or team lead,” said Kevin Wu, founding and CEO of Pathrise, an online tech mentoring company based in San Francisco. “But it can also mean assuming a project where you can highlight your knowledge, assuming a position more suited for your objectives and getting compliments from your managers.”
In the end, you ought to be the one to define personal development for you.2. Create a Methodical Plan
Developing a thorough plan for how you will meet your development goals is crucial to both keeping them in line with your larger growth goals and to help you to be accountable to accomplishing them. Consider your ideal job and then work out a reasonable and feasible route from point A to point B.
Review job ads for positions you are interested in, create a list of all the qualifications they demand, and arrange to pick up these talents. To experience many career paths, you can also network with individuals in your field and schedule informative interviews. Apply to your own plan using what you can learn from theirs.
“You can start to create plans for reaching your goals once you know where they lie,” Wu added. “Find someone in your ideal job; next, create a list of what you need to have in five to ten years to land that post. Which abilities do they possess that would be useful to you?
Make Use of Resources Available to Your Employer.
Your business can help you develop in several different ways. Benefits packages can call for a stipend or reimbursement for graduate degrees or online courses, Wu added. Certain businesses also arrange lunch and learning programs with an eye toward developing important skills. Bring up training or development tools you would want your business to offer to your management and explain how they can improve your performance.
“Say you’re a developer, but you’re really interested in data science,” said Matt Jackson, LaunchPad Lab’s software company’s salesforce developer. “Your manager might be able to locate an AI or predictive analytics project for you if you let them know you are enthusiastic about something. Being straight up and honest might open more doors.
Look for educational possibilities.
Ask someone in your business about a position you would want to investigate; then, ask if you might shadow them for a day to learn about their duties and the abilities they depend on to be completed. You can also join a forum to ask questions, take online courses and view computer skills videos on YouTube.
Concentrate on being proactive. Offer to head a project including a cross-functional team if you wish to advance into a leadership post. Work on teaching yourself a new code stack at a boot camp or pick up freelancing assignments. Another choice is to build a portfolio and launch a blog to monitor your development so you might present it to others.
Tap and expand your professional network.
Having someone who can hold you responsible for accomplishing your objectives can help you to be sure you meet them. This advice could be in the form of a mentoring, but more informally you could ask friends or colleagues to assist in tracking your development.
“You can really gain from having a good network of other people you feel comfortable asking for help,” Jackson added. “Building your confidence is much enhanced by having work friends ready to assist you in solving a problem by jumping on a Zoom call.”
If you are seeking a mentor, understand that mentoring is a two-way road; you will only get out as much as you offer.
“Establish a reasonable cadence for meetings so that neither of you feels overwhelmed and remember that they won’t be able to supply the answer to every question you ask,” Wu added. “You should be researching and working on your own; then come to them for direction and support.”