A career development plan (CDP) is your own personal roadmap that helps you to reflect and plan your career goals. A CDP is specific and unique to you, and they allow you to break down your plans into more manageable parts.
This article will cover:
- Why creating a career development plan might be helpful
- Common elements of a career development plan
- Top tips when creating a career development plan
Why creating a career development plan might be helpful
When you start your CDP, it might be that you don’t have a clear idea of a singular career goal – and that is ok! By completing one, you should hopefully enhance your self-awareness and have a better idea of your skills and attributes, and therefore what kind of career might suit you best.
As well as helping you solidify your career plans, a CDP can help provide you with direction and a clear focus to help you stay on track with reaching your goals. This could be especially important during your time at university, when you might have a lot of competing priorities and decisions to make about your future.
Common elements of a career development plan
Below, we outline of some common elements of career development plans, and the information you could use to build each section.
1. Self-assessment
This part of a CDP allows you to reflect on you and the qualities and attributes you possess currently. It is an important part of the plan as it will provide you with a clearer picture of your capabilities and preferences when it comes to a career. Below you will find some things to think about as part of the self-assessment part of your CDP.
Skills
Consider which skills you possess. Think about both your ‘soft’ skills such as communication, teamwork, time management, and technical skills such as IT software, languages spoken, lab skills etc. Also try to evidence in which contexts you gained your skills – it could be from your university studies, part time work, volunteering or extracurricular activities.
Interests
What do you enjoy doing? Reflect on activities that engage and excite you; these could be study or work-related tasks, a particular subject area, or a hobby for example.
Strengths
Think about what you are particularly good at, your past successes and times when you have got good feedback from others.
Values
Reflecting on what your values are, and what’s important to you, will help you to decide what you might want from a career, and what kind of role might give you the most job satisfaction. Values might include respect, ambition, compassion, equality, integrity, creativity, dedication etc.
You could utilise a number of online quizzes and tests to help complete your self-assessment and to reflect on your skills, interests, strengths and values. For example:
16 Personalities
VIA Character Strengths Test
National Careers Skills Assessment
Personal Values Quiz
2. Research career paths
After you have completed your self-assessment, you should hopefully have a clearer idea of what kind of career paths you might be aligned with. To research different career options further, use online resources such as the ‘what can I do with my degree’ pages on the Unitemps website to explore the various paths you could take. You could also look at online jobs boards, such as the Unitemps ‘Find a job’ page, to research live vacancies. This will help you to see what kind of opportunities are available, the types of skills required and what kind of tasks and responsibilities are involved.
Networking sites such as LinkedIn are also useful to help you explore different roles and build up your contacts within your chosen sector. It also has an ‘alumni’ tool that allows you to search for what previous graduates of your university have gone on to do, to help you generate and research even more career ideas!
3. Skills gap analysis
As part of your research, you might identify some skills that your preferred career path requires and that you need to develop. For example, you might be interested in a career related to data analysis, but don’t have much experience of required tools such as Excel or Power BI. Once you have identified any potential ‘skills gaps’ you can build in how to develop these skills within the goal setting and action plan sections of your CDP, as outlined below.
4. Career goals (short, medium and long term)
Next you can think about the kinds of goals you would like to set for yourself. Try to break these down into long, medium- and short-term goals. Long term goals are those that you are looking to reach within the next 5-10 years, such as reaching a specific career position, or earning further qualifications. Medium term goals, which are those you hope to achieve within 1-5 years, could relate to gaining relevant work experience, completing a specific piece of coursework or undertaking a placement year. Short term goals are more immediate, and could involve improving specific skills, attending a careers event or workshop, or working on your CV.
Use the SMART principle when setting your goals, as this will help you focus them more effectively. SMART stands for:
- Specific – be as precise as you can with your objective
- Measurable – be clear on how you can tell when you have achieved your goal
- Attainable – goals should be challenging, but also realistic!
- Relevant – make sure your goals stay related to you
- Time-bound – set yourself a timescale for reaching your goals
For example, a goal that doesn’t follow the SMART principles might be ‘Do some work experience’. This is very generic, as it does not indicate the type of work experience, or what the preferred sector is. It has also not given a clear timescale for when the outcome will be achieved. An improved version of this goal might be:
‘Secure some voluntary physiotherapy work experience with a football club, by January 2025’
This goal is much more specific, as it has stated what the preferred type of work experience is, what kind of organisation they would like to do it with, and has given a clear timeframe for when they would like to complete it by. Other examples of SMART goals might be:
- ‘Complete an online course that will allow me to improve my coding skills over the Christmas break’ (short term)
- ‘Secure a volunteering opportunity within the local community that will allow me to develop skills and experience related to my preferred career in the criminal justice sector. I intend to start this opportunity by Easter 2025’ (medium term)
- ‘Become a fully qualified architect within 7-10 years’ (long term)
5. Action steps
Action steps are specific tasks or activities that you will undertake to help you reach your short, medium- and long-term career goals. Under each of your goals, try to jot down a few action steps that will help to break down the goal into more manageable chunks, and will hopefully mean you keep progressing towards your overall aims.
Examples of action steps for the goal ‘secure some voluntary physiotherapy work experience with a football club, by January 2025’ could be:
- Research and compile a list of local football clubs to ask about potential work experience
- Prepare CV and cover letter tailored towards roles in physiotherapy
- Reach out to at least five football clubs by October 2024
Top tips when creating a career development plan
Make it visually appealing
Try and make your CDP visually appealing, as you will be more likely to look at it! You could use a design software such as Canva to help design your CDP. Including images is also a good idea, as a combination of pictures and text can help to solidify the goals in your mind.
Get support and advice
When you are in the process of creating your CDP, it could be a good idea to get advice from your university’s career service. They will have resources to help you create your CDP, and they can offer advice and guidance on how to build your plan to reach your career goals. You could also talk to your lecturers or teachers for more information and insight into potential careers related to your preferred industry, as well as family or friends who may work in the sector (or know people who do!).
Make sure you build in a ‘check in’ with yourself
When you have set your goals as part of your CDP, make sure to set yourself a time frame for when you will check in to see how you are progressing with your goals. This timeframe will depend on you and your circumstances, but every six months might be a good place to start. By checking in with yourself regularly, you will be more likely to stay on track, and it can allow you to adjust your timelines and goals if necessary.
Be kind to yourself – understand that things may change
Although it’s important to challenge yourself with your goals, don’t be too hard on yourself if some of your circumstances change and you have to adapt the scope and timeframe of some of your aims. Rather than seeing adaptations to your CDP as setbacks, view them as a learning opportunity. This mindset should help you adapt positively to any changes, and ensure you are being kind to yourself along the way.
Take a look at the career development section of the Unitemps Career Advice pages for more advice on how to advance in your career.
This article was written by Amy-Evan Cook.
Last updated on 15 July 2024
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