To guarantee the success of your career, you must have goals, a great vision and above all aspirations, otherwise it will be difficult for you to evolve and direct your boat in a specific direction. To do this, you will first need to establish a career plan for your professional life.

Without this, it will be difficult for you to decide which direction you want to take in your professional life. Follow our practical guide for career management that allows you to both develop your potential and achieve your goals.

If you want to evolve in your career, define a starting point, an itinerary and above all a destination. To do this, you will first have to take stock of your condition. Take the time to assess yourself by focusing on your professional situation, your qualities and personality, your preferences, your aptitudes, but also your principles and values. You can ask yourself a series of questions to help you understand:

• What motivates you?
• What are your professional qualities, strengths and weaknesses?
• What are your soft skills?
• What are your professional limits?
• What do you need to thrive?

The most important question is certainly what profession are you looking for? From this self-assessment, you will be able to determine your skills, whether they are technical or behavioural. You now know what makes you different, and what makes your added value in the professional world.

Once your self-assessment is complete, you will need to think about the careers that are best suited to your situation based on your interests, skills and career path. For example, you can search for the positions and sectors that interest you with a short personal brainstorming session. The concept is simple: write down all the ideas that come to your mind. Then eliminate ideas that seem bad or impractical (in your current situation) and you will have a definitive list of your career plan. All you need to do now is to find the right positions for your ideas.

You have defined your career direction and made the necessary decisions; you now have to deduce from it the path to follow, the knowledge or experience to acquire and the time needed to achieve it. How soon do you want to reach the first step of your plan? What means will you have to implement to achieve this? What tools do you need? Above all, take your time and proceed step by step for more serenity. Successful people, whether athletes, businessmen or artists, are always incredibly focused on one goal, then on another when the first is achieved and so on. To help you, specify your objectives by answering the following questions:

• What is your project for the next 6 months? Next years?
• How and when will you achieve your training objectives? Which school or type of diploma are you aiming for (MBA, undergraduate, postgraduate…)?
• How and when will you acquire the necessary skills and experience?
• How can you use and expand your network and in how long?

Once you have determined your objectives and how to achieve them, you will know which way to go. It is important that you follow the evolution of your career plan and maintain the defined course. However, do not hesitate to detach yourself from it when an opportunity arises. Or on the other hand, whenever you feel uncomfortable in your position, anticipate professional or personal difficulties or simply want a raise.

As you will have understood, your career plan must adapt to personal and professional circumstances. But the direction you have given your life at the beginning of your career plan will always be “tangible”, even in 40 years’ time. And from the reality you will experience then, you will have to change, reorient your initial career plan. That’s why you need to build a flexible, “slippery” career plan over the years, to adapt it to your successes or failures, in real time.

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