Making the most of your career

If you fail to realise your full potential in your career, you can expect to feel bored, frustrated and disillusioned.

The company or organisation you work for can influence this, but ultimately it is down to you and your personal drive to get to where you want to go.

It is no coincidence that truly successful companies often have clear career paths, particularly if they focus on attracting good people and keeping them.

Similarly, employees within organisations that are struggling often do not know what their next step is.

If you are in a more stagnant organisation, a lack of any obvious career path is a serious problem, particularly if you are at the start of your career.

It is at this stage that you need to be gaining a good breadth and depth of experience which will lay the foundations for future personal growth.

Without good career development opportunities, you may not achieve your long-term potential. The really good, top jobs require individuals who can boast specific skills and experience, and you will not get these jobs unless you have had the opportunity to accumulate the appropriate skill set.

Analyse your current position

It is important to understand where you are now so that you are realistic in identifying the options open to you, and so that you use all of the resources available to you.

A good place to start is to take stock of your knowledge, skills, experience and resources.

What do you want to achieve?

Think through what sort of job you ultimately want.

Not everyone wants to be a managing director or senior manager.

Identify the sort of work you want to do, perhaps by looking at the job others do or by reviewing job adverts to identify the roles that are out there.

Knowing where you are going is half the battle.

Research

Having identified your career options (even if the option is to stay in the same career), it is important to do some basic research into these.

In particular you need to know whether the career is increasing or declining in importance, and you need to know what the rewards will be.

Whatever you want to do, you should speak to people in your target job to get their opinions on your suitability and what you need to do to get there.

They should be able to give the best advice on how to get there and on the good companies to work for within the industry.

All of this helps you to check that the career is as desirable as you think it is, and gives you the basic information you need to succeed.

Plan your approach

Once you know where you want to go, the next stage is to work out how to get there.

If you need new skills to make the change then you need to begin to acquire them.

If you need experience then you need to work out how to get it.

If you want to make a major change then it may not be practical to do this in one go.

This is particularly the case if you want to change to a radically new career in a new company or industry.

Similarly, if you want to move to a senior role, then you will normally have to work through a series of intermediate roles.

Alternatively, you may have come to the conclusion that you need to change organisation.

If this is the case then make sure you approach this change as a major project in its own right - the effort you put in will determine the quality of the role you eventually find.

As with many other things, the best careers come about through a mix of careful planning and opportunism.

Make sure that you do not ignore good career opportunities that present themselves.

This should help you to think about how you would like your career to develop.

This is particularly useful in jobs where there is no clear, established career path or where you are locked into a job that does not satisfy you.

Planning your career helps you to avoid the boredom, disillusionment and frustration that will come with failing to have achieved your potential.

This is a real risk if a good, clear, satisfying career path is not open to you.

Neal Lucas is a senior consultant with Forde May Consulting, which specialises in head hunting, recruitment and selection. He, along with Beth McMaw or Forde May, can be contacted on 9062 8877 or at www.jobmarketni.com.