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A career goal helps you focus and make decisions on what you want to do for a living. It directs you, motivates you and helps you to accomplish what you want. It may help you discover your talent, skills and abilities and possibilities that you wouldn’t have thought of. Many possibilities exist with any career you choose. Having a career goal can guide you to doing what you want to do in your life—rather than just aimlessly drifting from job to job.
On the other hand, career planning is simply goal planning with the intention of setting goals for jobs and career. In order to remain competitive you need to be as flexible as you can and continually increase your skills. Some things you can do are take workshops or seminars, keep up with trade journals and talk to people who are knowledgeable in the field.
Today, it’s almost mandatory for us to take some form of training all through our career to keep up with the times. Let’s suppose you choose a field in customer service. Career planning is not planning for that field on a one-time only basis, but it’s a continuing process; in fact, you can call it a lifetime process. We are always learning and growing, and as we do, our interests and needs also change. It is not just making plans to obtain your “perfect” job or career, but to help you make the many adjustments there will be along the way as you learn about you and your world or work.
