Designing your personal career plan

By Thando Nkomo

I'm sure you have heard of the saying “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail!” This holds true for everyone whether young or old or whether in school or out of school. Nothing substitutes planning. Many people take time to plan for their weddings, birthday parties and holiday trips, but very few plan out their careers.

Planning is very important especially when it comes to building a career. If you fail to have a plan on how you will become a doctor, engineer, architect, business owner or farm owner, you will have challenges achieving these goals.

Think of yourself as being on a journey. Like all journeys you take, you must have a plan on how

you will move from your departure point to your destination. If you are going to a city you have

never been to before, a map always comes in handy to give you directions on how to get to the

city and how to find your way around the city.

Having a checklist to mark your progress towards your destination will save you a lot of worry along the way. Your checklist will let you know what to take with you and also give you some milestones to indicate your progress.

Did you know that O level exams are one of the milestones in your journey to your career destination. How you perform in your exams will be an indication of your preparedness to reach your career destination. But what is important is for you to remember that writing the exams must be a part of your overall plan of getting to your career destination. Without this plan, you will be like someone traveling in a bus without knowing the destination of the bus. So you need to have a career plan. This plan includes a statement indicating your career goal and the activities you will do in order to achieve that goal together with the deadlines.

Having a plan is an important step towards accomplishing any task you embark on. Plans state the tasks that must be completed and the time when these tasks should be completed. Without plans organisations and individuals are doomed to fail. That is why we all need to have plans so that we are clear and focused on where we want to go, when and how we will get there. Use the worksheet below draft your own Career Plan.