Career Labs - Preparing your Career to shift into next orbit
- Career
- 5 min read
A successful career doesn’t typically happen by chance. In order to build one and get all the benefits that come from it, you need to spend some time reflecting on what you want and how you will get there—that’s exactly what career planning does for you. But, why is career planning so important?
Let us start by understanding, what is Career Planning?
Career Planning:
Career planning refers to the process of planning career choices, establishing career objectives and deciding on educational and developmental programs to improve the skills required to achieve your short and long term career goals. It is the process of aligning one’s career goals, aspirations and skills. It is a continuous and iterative process of understanding oneself, setting career goals, revising skills and searching for the right career options.
A person may need to start this planning process from scratch every few years based on the market trends or demand and also based on the outcome of the current plan.
It is important that you explore different career options in detail to find a fit between your abilities and the opportunities available. This requires continuous learning and improvement to build and grow.
Importance of Career Planning:
Career planning identifies gaps you need to fill and it gives you the opportunity to fill a variety of skill gaps at once, make professional connections that’ll support you for the rest of your career, and pivot in an entirely different direction.
Career planning gives you space for ongoing personal reflection
A good career plan takes into account your strengths, weaknesses, values, and what you like and need out of a career. So, this is your opportunity to reflect on what you have to offer to the world (and potential employers), how your career plan fits your life, and identify ways that you can grow (personally and professionally).
Career planning provides much-needed motivation and guidance
As much as you may want it to, your career path will not likely follow a straight line. Having a career plan will help you stay motivated during all the twists and turns your career path throws at you. And, most importantly, it will guide you during times when you are considering career or industry changes by helping you figure out whether your choice truly fits the plan.
So, where do you begin? The easiest way is to start writing everything down. While this is important, this alone will not be sufficient.
It is important to follow a scientific and proven way of identifying the career interests, gaps and steps to address the gaps. Also, it is important to have the right people in the form of coaches and mentors to help in your career planning.
Career coaches bring a great mix of behavioral insights, understanding about the world of work and talent development and an encouraging and supportive style, to help you clarify your career aspirations, see what’s coming in the way and learn how to overcome these blocks. You should turn to a career coach and seek their expert help if you find any of these signs in your career.
IPL Career Labs provides a systematic career planning & development approach with a set of curated digital resources, group interventions including workshops, masterclasses, individual interventions including career development plan, career assets review, 1:1 career coaching.
Highlights of IPL Career Labs:
- The program offers curated resources that will help you broaden your perspective on your own career.
- The program includes a six step comprehensive framework that will help you master career skills like building your profile, landing interviews with your dream companies, mapping and matching your skills and competencies to your current and future jobs, interviewing with power and the like.
- This program will help you build a career development plan which includes your leadership assessment and 1:11 coaching sessions, master classes among other resources that are made available to you throughout your program.
- The program also gets enriched with new resources and frameworks as the industry and job market landscape evolves.
Career Labs Artefacts
