What Is Career Planning?

Career planning is a process for:

• Identifying what you are good at
• Knowing how your skills, talents, values, and interests translate into possible jobs or careers
• Matching your skills, etc. to existing jobs or careers
• Matching your career goals to your financial needs
• Matching your career goals to your educational needs
• Making good decisions for yourself
• Finding ways to meet your educational and financial needs on your schedule

The Career Planning Process Itself Has Three Main Components:

Why do career planning?

It is well established that most jobs that pay family-sustaining wages require some post-secondary education (that is, education beyond the high school level).  By taking the time to plan for your career now, you increase the chances of completing your education and getting the job you want.

What’s the difference between a job and a career?

A job is the occupation that you have at any given point in time.  A career refers to your working life over time, and could include a single job that you stay in for many years, or a series of successive jobs within the same field.  For example, you may decide to become a seventh-grade math teacher and stay in that job for 20 or 30 years or more, all the while gathering experience and additional training. In this case, you could say that your job was a math teacher, and that you also have a career as a math teacher. Or, you may decide simply that you want a career in health care. 

Example : you might choose to begin that career as a Medical Professional, with additional education, become a technologist and then a registered nurse. 

It’s important to think about both your short-term and long-term goals.