What is Career Management? Meaning, Process, and Objectives

Career management allows companies to improve the performance of their establishment with better employee engagement.

Through these processes, hiring quality employees can become realistic. Examples of career management are credentialed coursework, certificate programs (related to your career), joining innovative projects, attending conferences, and staying current in professional reading.

There are preparatory high school elective classes in career management that help prepare students for some of the key management skills, like communication, leadership, goal setting, time management, and other key skills that one needs to succeed in a professional environment.

Continue reading to learn more about career management, its processes, and objectives.

What is Career Management?

According to Wikipedia, “career management” is the combination of structured planning and the active management choice of one’s professional career.

In general, career management entails the various processes that allow for professionals to be keen in their career skills and use those skills to the betterment of their careers and the business they currently employ them in.

A career is an occupation that an individual does for a significant period of their life. Many people their careers have hopes and aspirations in by they hope for the best and work towards fulfillment in whatever career choice they have made.

Some organizations have a formal career management plan.

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Career Management Process

This involves the ways you can jumpstart your career, and how to ensure that you get the best optimal outcome in your career. The career management processes are:

1. Career Planning

As the name suggests, career planning is an intentional process that involves plotting the plan for your career through setting career goals and strategic ways to achieve them. Career planning aims to provide direction to professionals during their career pathways.

There are processes of career planning which allow you to achieve an optimal outcome in your career they are:

Self-Development

This involves becoming aware of parts of the bigger picture. Self-development is assessing yourself and identifying areas you lack that hinder your progression in your career and allowing yourself to learn and develop.

This is an important part because, with self-development, you will be stuck in a level that is undesirable in your master plan and falls short to achieve the success that you hoped for.

Consider meeting with a career counselor. A career counselor is one specializes in helping professionals understand elements that can influence and help career decisions and identify possibilities that may have been overlooked.

A career counselor might use the following to process you: skill identification exercises, interest inventories, communication, and other ways that can accelerate your growth.

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Research

You can decide which types of careers you are interested in with research. Starting with roles and industries provided by your assessments and a list of characteristics in the work environment, responsibilities, and advancement opportunities you want in your career.

Using those findings, determine more roles and industries you may want to consider. Going forward you will need to identify ways that can help you by which skills you are going to need to achieve success.

Research allows you to go for making modules that granulate the result you want to achieve.

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Plan

Planning is essential. Through research, you will compile your findings into strategic planning to get the best optimal outcome, as the popular saying goes, “he who hasn’t planned, has planned to fail“.

Getting a plan will provide you with the road map to easily achieve your goals. 

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Action

The last part of the puzzle is taking action with the plan you have drawn out and taking them bit by bit. Draw out activities that will be easy to work with and pursue your goals. It shouldn’t stop at the planning stage.

There are many ways to gain experience as an entry-level employee. Some opportunities might not be in the bags consider volunteering, internships, and taking part-time jobs to build up and get to work through those your plans.

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2. Career Pathing

Through career planning, you can easily identify which way you want your career path to proceed.

Pathing of your career will involve organization structure and what role models to ask for help in achieving optimal career paths.

Career pathing is becoming more self-aware of the place you want to be and the roads you can follow to reach them.

Networking will go a long way towards assisting you with pathing your career. By identifying those with similar aspirations and those already in the field, you can reduce the workload.

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3. Career Development

Career development is the step-by-step need of the professional to achieve whatever is related to his or her related occupational status. This adapts to the person’s experiences, and this involves long-term and short-term careers.

Short-term careers allow for experience along the way to achieving a greater role. A long-term career is more of a steady commitment to your career through specialization and working towards retirement. 

The three processes highlight the need for you to seriously look into achieving optimal career success for your career through goal setting which might come in three stages – short-term goals, intermittent goals, and long term goals, stretching yourself through active improvement, and getting feedback about your growth process from professionals in the business. 

The key areas of career management include- career practices, development Ideals, individual responsibility, and consensus among management and Human Resources. This will summarize education, capability, network, and experience.

The organizational system of career management relates to several levels, as depicted in Yehuda Baruch’s CAST model, philosophy, policy, and practice, which are parallel to individuals—aspirations, attitudes, and actions.

Many scholars have emphasized the need to match individual and organizational needs. Importantly, this model compares and contrasts the organizational and individual needs and expectations.

The strategic practical level involves— human resource management (HRM) activities that form the career management system, a comprehensive portfolio of HRM practices, which can be conducted by organizations to plan and manage employees’ careers.

Actual evidence or proof of work is presented regarding the extent to which these practices are applied in organizational settings. 

Career Management Objectives

Every profession has its career path. Many people change tracks, and mid-career changes are more acceptable than ever.

Should you choose to specialize, with rapid advances in technology, the world of work is constantly changing. Being able to upskill and reskilling are often essential to ensure you stay relevant.

Every moment of trial, no matter how difficult, is an opportunity to re-evaluate your goals and see if your plans are on track.

Through other professionals who have achieved success, you can pace yourself and be prepared for the journey.

By building your work ethic, communication, and teamwork skills, by building self-awareness on skill gaps and strengths, as earlier discussed in the previous section you can have greater clarity on how you can grow more as individuals and professionals, setting them up for long-term success. 

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Career Management Objectives are;

Help in improving the performances of the employees: Identifying goals and skills required to perform at any level and they properly equip, ensuring employers break down the excess and allows employees to give the best possible.

To align and integrate the goals of the employees as well as the organization: Many times, professionals enter a workplace with individual goals they see themselves achieving and the company also has its own goals and aspiring. Conflict might arise if both do not align to work for the best working outfit, which will hinder the progress of both the company’s and render years of planning futile. Organizations need to find the best ways to promote the goals of both. 

Ensuring there are skilled and competent employees in the organization: Career management allows for prepared workers who are competent for job roles that suit their respective roles in the organization, and no discrepancies arise from fielding the least skilled workers in positions that need skilled professionals.

Informing the employees about the available career options in the organization: Career paths are ways a professional grow and the organization is required to be able to assist in ensuring skilled workers are informed as to when higher opportunities rise in the industry.

Why Is Career Management Important?

With career management, choices made by both the organization and individual partnering career choices are improved and help improve individuals in suited roles for their abilities.

This helps the individual to grow according to their skillset and the services they can offer, giving them and the organization a fitting space where the two can grow professionally.

Producing the best results for one’s career is the essential need for career management allowing one to set out goals to meet these. 

What Are Career Management Skills?

Career management skills are generally skills needed by you to make the right decisions towards managing a successful career.

Here are some of the skills you will be needing to build and sustaining a career you desire:

1. Planning: Planning is a skill set required to make any meaningful progress in any sphere of life and ensure that you don’t get lost along the way. Without plans, all your work is left to guess which a very bad way to move forward is. 
2. Communication: The ability to communicate effectively is a skill you will need to be able to lay out what you want. Without effective communication, you won’t be able to navigate smoothly your way and this can create barriers for you.
3. Leadership: It doesn’t matter if you are the CEO or not, being a leader is what every person should work on. There are many times or situations that might rise to lead a team and not having the right skill could result in disasters.
4. Employability: You should never give up the chance to improve yourself and give yourself an edge. Many employees look beyond what you can do to if you can actually do it when external situations arise like pressure, being accountable, and so on.
5. Problem-Solving: You will need to be mentally ready to solve problems that might arise. Think deeply about their causes and how to avoid future lapses.
6. Creativity: The industry is actively looking for creative individuals who can make something out of nothing. You can create masterpieces that can solve problems, being creative gives you an edge.

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How Can I Improve My Career Management?

If growth is essential to you, then it’s essential to know the various ways you can make progress.

With changing working systems, innovation and adaptability are going to be two of your greatest strengths in ensuring that you thrive in whatever environment that you find yourself in.

Here are some of the ways you can improve your career management:

Learn Always

Having a positive attitude towards improving your knowledge towards your workspace and outside it will help you greatly in making much wiser decisions when it concerns your career.

Learning gives you an edge and balance you will need to navigate softly towards mistakes that you could make had you not learnt about it. 

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Add Value

Be consistent in ensuring that you are adding value to your workplace. This makes you indispensable and dependable.

Most of the time organizations tend to profit these individuals and ensure that they are helping them as they are to them. Creating value is a very essential part of your progress.

Engagement

Making connections within your workspace is essential.

When you constantly engage with those you are working with you create an atmosphere where you can get feedback on certain issues that can help you be more productive and efficient.

Always isolating oneself can create vacuums of inefficient and unproductive work.

Travel

Traveling can help improve your career management. By experiencing other work cultures and socializing with them, you can improve on that which is lacking in yours.

Traveling also helps to relax you and you tend to make better decisions when it comes to issues concerning your career.

Set Goals 

This is one of the most important ways to improve your career, many times unsuccessful careers can be linked back to not setting goals.

Goals are like maps you need for better navigation without them most of the time you might be lost and searching for what you should have written down. 

Some of the issues of career management are:

• Boundary setting and difficulties communicating needs with co-workers or supervisors.
• Company reorganization 
• Job loss and the emotional impact it can have on your confidence and self-worth.
• Evaluating jobs and job offers.
• Feedback
• Promotion challenges

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Conclusion

Career management systems allow for the growth of both the employee and the organization in question.

It allows for effective communication, encourages the use of employee skills, achieving the goals of employees and the company.

References

• managementstudyguide.com – benefits-of-career-development-system.htm
• mbaknol.com – human-resource-management/career-management-definition-and-meaning/

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