3 Career Planning Tips for Fresh Grads and Career-Changers

Career development planning is essential no matter what life stage or career season you're in. Whether you're a fresh graduate or pursuing a mid-life career change, it's important to keep your career plan in mind. It's even more important to have one in the first place. A lot of people go through their lives going to work to finish their 9-to-5 shifts without much thought to their overall career. Whether you're comfortable staying at your mid-level rank or aspire to climb the corporate ladder, you need a long-term plan to get what you want.

While there are plenty of tips for setting career development goals, we're going to focus on the three core pillars that every jobseeker should know.

But first…

What is career planning?

Career planning refers to your long-term strategy to achieve your career dreams. If you're newly employed at a large company but hope to one day start your own business, that's the start of a career plan. If you already own a company but plan to sell it to start another company, that's also a career plan. These are goals, and career planning is the path you set to achieve them.

Having a career development plan is great for several reasons. It'll help your self-improvement, push you to pursue your dreams, and provide you with clarity =by simply knowing where you want to go.

In short, career planning is your path to success, and it's important to remember that success looks different to everyone. Whether your goal is to retire by 40, be a stay-at-home parent, or start your own business, all dreams are valid, but it will take planning to make them a reality. Before we delve into career planning tips, let's take a look at the various types of career planning.

What are the types of career planning?

There are four main types or segments of career planning: performance management, career management, career change, and career start. Performance management refers to improving your performance at a specific job to progress on your career path based on accomplishments and recognition. This is the most common type of career planning. The other type is career management, which delves into identifying your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This typically deals with the "planning" part of career planning.

The third type is a career change, which refers to analyzing your current work situation and focusing on your quality of life and long-term goals. The final type is career start, which refers to putting all of these small goals and ideas into motion.

Career planning is a complicated process that is best divided into stages so you won't be pressured or overwhelmed.

Three top tips for every type of jobseeker

Now let's get to the tips! There are plenty of tried-and-tested tips out there, but we'll be focusing on those that you should undertake at a particular career stage.

For fresh grads:

Prioritise career planning

When you're just starting out, there's so much for you to learn about the opportunities that are available to you. University will teach you the basics and equip you with the skills to succeed. However, most aren't exposed to the opportunities you might find once you're actually in the workplace. For example, new marketing professionals can now explore social media marketing and management, electronic direct mail marketing, and SEO content. Not all of this is taught in school.

The best way to prioritize career planning is by researching about it.. Get to know your industry, the new employment trends on the horizon, and figure out where you want to go from there. Perhaps the best advice we can also give you is to enjoy the thrill of your first job. Creating goals and dreams is easier when the present, and the future, are exciting.

Keep an up-to-date resume

At this early stage of your career, your resume likely isn't very full and filled with only your school accomplishments. That's completely normal, but once you get your first job, one of your missions should be to fill it up. Build your career by learning new skills, earning certification, venturing into freelance work, and accepting part-time projects. Focus on creating your network so you have strong references to add to your resume.

Since you're starting from scratch, put your energy into enhancing your work self so you have plenty of things to add to your resume.

Discover what you want from work

In these early stages, many people are so consumed with climbing up that they forget to stop and ask themselves if that's what they even want. At this stage, you must know what it is you want and what you like. Ask yourself, what environment makes you the most productive? Are you better when you work in a team? Do you have leadership qualities? Is work-life balance important to you? You will find your answers naturally throughout the first few years of your career. Discover what sort of environment you want for your dream career path, then start career planning from there.

For career-changers:

Learn new skills

Changing careers will require you to learn a whole set of new skills, almost similar to the experiences of fresh grads. This new career path might demand a different skillset, so make sure to plan your career in line with the time it might take to learn all of these skills.

To help you learn these new skills, set goals and time frames for yourself to learn these skills so you can progress along with your career development plan at a steady pace.

Audit your strengths

When planning your career, you'll need to do a SWOT analysis of yourself. Fresh grads can do this too, but the advantage of career shifters is that they have years or decades of experience. Take stock of every important technical skill you've learned during your first career path, and then adapt them to your new career path.

After figuring out how to take advantage of what you're good at, identify the transferable skills that you can apply to your new career. By transferable, we mean soft skills like leadership, teamwork, etc. Add to your already prolific resume the strengths that will be useful to your career plan.

Stay motivated

A career change can be challenging but also exciting. The great thing about changing careers is that it brings back the excitement of the early stages of working. Enthusiasm is important to stay motivated along your new career path despite the typical nervousness and uncertainty.

Don't be afraid to be ambitious and hopeful in your career plan, and dare to dream of great opportunities.

Now that you're equipped with top tips on career planning, take some time to update your resume and find your dream job on JobStreet. Read up on JobStreet's best career planning advice on the Career Resources page now.