How to Successfully Choose the Right Career for Your Future

Once you have your goals set, you can move on to making a career action plan. This will list all of your goals along with the steps you have to take to realize your goals. Having all of this information written down will make it more real and motivate you to achieve those goals and realize success.

A career action plan is a road map that takes you from choosing an occupation to becoming employed in that occupation to reaching your long-term career goals. The career planning process is ongoing, and bi-directional, meaning you can move back to previous steps when you need to gather more information or clarify your choices. Once you have identified an occupation to pursue you should develop an action plan.

According to Individualized Career Plan Models - Eric Digest No. 71(ERIC Clearinghouse on Adult Career and Vocational Education), “Personal plans of action -- individualized career development plans -- are becoming important instruments that counselors and others are using to help their students and/or clients (both youth and adults) meet their changing goals, interests and needs in this fast-paced, rapidly changing society.”

Though the ERIC Digest talks about individualized career plans being used by counselors and other professionals, you can develop a plan yourself. Even if you do work with a counselor, you will need to do some of the work yourself.

For example, a counselor can't set your goals for you. He or she will just help you clarify your goals and help you find strategies to reach them. In addition, an action plan should be amended over time as your goals change, your priorities change, and your career grows. Let's begin now to take a look at how to develop a career action plan step-by-step.

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