As kids, we had ready answers when someone posed the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
So why do we leave behind the question when we move ahead in our jobs and careers? Do we consider it a waste of time to ponder on question “what I want to be in my life” or due to the competitive job market the first job that we get, shapes the future of our careers? Building a career is no longer about finding the right job and keeping it, but about making continual career choices.
It is true that the job world is not predictable. However, it would be juvenile to conclude that career planning is a mere waste of time. According to a recent NCDA/NOICC Gallup Survey, 72% of adults would choose to research their career options more thoroughly if they were to start over.
Can Career Planning be the Ultimate Solution?
Each individual’s career is a personal, lifelong quest for satisfaction and accomplishment, for learning and growth, for the security of an income, and for self-expression. Psychologically speaking, an individual would be committed to fulfill his achievement, affiliation or power needs through his career.
“The future depends on what we do in the present.” – Mahatma Gandhi
Career Planning provides a direction to achieve the quest, the ultimate objective, by identifying your strengths and optimizing on the opportunities that come your way. Career planning starts from self-interrogation to determine the career goal you want to achieve and making plans to reach that goal. It is a dynamic and incessant process, as at every job change your intermediate goals will change and replaced by short term objectives to reach the epitome.
A word of caution: ’Don’t let a career plan lead you into a false sense of confidence..
One has to be realistic in setting the utmost goal, the SSMART way of goal setting, and keep reviewing the plans and processes undertaken to achieve the goals, while adhering to the timelines.
Keep an open eye for the opportunities that come your way, including complementary career paths, and be receptive to enhancing your skills and knowledge during the entire process. Weigh the financial implications of a career decision that you take starting from pursuing any course to enhance your skills to the changes in your monetary conditions due to job switching.
To ensure that your career plan does not end up as a fruitless project in which you have invested your time, education, learning’s and experiences, try to intertwine passion, purpose, and personal fulfillment into your career. Keep milestones and celebrate the success of each achievement.
“The reason most people never reach their goals is that they don’t define them, or ever seriously consider them as believable or achievable. Winners can tell you where they are going, what they plan to do along the way, and who will be sharing the adventure with them.” – Denis Watley
Does competency mapping ensure excellent performance?
Traditionally, Competency was defined as the necessary knowledge, skills and abilities required to perform a particular work role. Practically considered, it is the capacity of an individual that leads to the behavior, which meets the job demands within the parameters of the organizational environment and in turn brings about desired results.
Individuals are assessed on the basis of aptitude, domain skills, communication skills, personality and psychometric tests to ensure “The right person is hired for the right job”. Organizations have defined the core competencies required for the job and would recruit those individuals who would be able to deliver superlative job performance.
Is Competence synonymous with Performance????
There have been myths considering competence and performance synonymously. Competence is not performance, but a state of being, a qualification to perform.
Taking an illustration from the live shows on television for finding the talented singers in an open forum; contestants give multiple performances which are a result of their competence as a singer, which are judged by audiences as good or bad. However, their competence is not the same thing as their performances; competence is the backbone on which these performances are being delivered. However, one cannot guarantee that a competent contestant will perform adequately. Sometimes, failure to perform could be attributed to personal and environment factors also.
Although, competencies are often used to help identify areas of potential development and help the manager/reviewer and role holder to articulate how focusing on particular competencies may aid the overall performance of the individual in their role. However, relying solely on competence mapping for improving performance can have a disastrous effect on the organizations employees.
As experienced by many organizations who failed to realize, appreciate and plan to utilize employees’ strengths. While the act of mapping the competencies of employees could give rich dividends to the organization, however, they focused only on the shortcomings and improving those areas resulted in de-motivation of employees. As a result the entire exercise goes waste in terms of time, effort and money of the organization.
Therefore, when any organization targets to improve the performance of its employees via competency mapping they should ensure that the entire exercise is made fruitful by keeping the following points in mind: One, focus on the strengths of the employees along with evaluating their weaknesses. Second, communicate effectively with the employees regarding the benefits the organization and individual will receive post the completion of the exercise and the strategy and direction the organization is going to pursue.
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