The Return of Career Management
The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development have reported that the number of firms planning to make people redundant has fallen and that the situation in the jobs market, although still severe, is better than it was a year ago. This doesn’t mean that we have turned a corner, but things do seem to be looking up.
Of course this is little consolation if you are looking for a job or facing redundancy. But if you are in work and if the situation is normalising, it is probably time to think about exiting survival mode (keeping your job at any cost) and looking at your career management. Indeed it may well be that one of the post-recession benefits will be an increase and improvement in the way we manage our careers.
Career management is the process whereby we take a proactive rather than a reactive view of our careers. Instead of letting things happen to us- an offer of a promotion here, a job vacancy popping up there- we make them happen. It is the process whereby our working careers become a positive aspect of our lives, rather than just something we do to earn money.
One of the great benefits of a well managed career is that it prepares us for the next crisis, whether of our own making or due to external reasons. If you have a career plan that tells you what will be the next major change you hope to make, and how to prepare for it, then you already have the beginnings of an insurance policy against the next redundancy.
For the redundancy will be the time to action the next phase of your career plan. And if you can be even more specific, so that you have already lined up the move you will make, or identified the training course you want to go on, the redundancy can be the catalyst for making it happen.
Career management is essential even without crises. It means that you know what opportunities you are looking for and that you are prepared and  constantly on the lookout for them. It means that you can set yardsticks with which to measure your progress and performance so that you have greater confidence in yourself. An increased emphasis on career management is one of the many changes we will see in our careers in the coming decades. Now is the time to start.
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Tags: career management, Career Moves, Redundancy, Training
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