4 Types of Career Planning

John Spacey, July 11, 2018

Career planning is the process of developing goals and an action plan for an individual's career. This has several common variations:

Performance Management

Many employers include a career planning component in their performance management process. Employees communicate their short term and long term goals and work with their manager to identify actionable and measurable steps towards these goals. This is an important part of the performance review process for high performers as it gives them a chance to push for a promotion and document the steps that are required. This type of career planning can be highly political and is confined to the opportunities available at your employer. As such, performance management related career planning isn't always useful for identifying your true aspirations and plan.

Action Plan	Career Direction
Career Path	Formal Communication
Performance Management	Smart

Career Management

Mid-career professionals may develop their own career plans beyond those known to their employer. This is typically a process of determining your goals, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to identify a few actionable steps that may improve your career.

Career Plan	Failing Upwards
Goal Planning	Goals
Individual Development Plan	Objectives
Personal Development Plan	SWOT Analysis

Career Change

Professionals considering a career change may develop a career plan that is a back-to-basics investigation of what they want to do with the rest of their life including areas such as work-life balance. When goals are identified, career planning can then proceed to analysis of opportunities and risk.

Career Change	Career Goals
Gainful Employment	Long Term Goals
Professions	Quality Of Life
Risk Analysis	Work-Life Balance
Working Conditions

Career Start

Inexperienced individuals such as students may plan for a future career by thinking about their goals, interests, abilities and personality. It typically requires guidance to map these factors to potential opportunities. At this stage, multiple unique opportunities may be listed with action steps designed to explore the waters or learn things that are useful to a broad range of professions. Alternatively, an individual may develop high confidence in a target career and develop an action plan to reach this goal.

Decision Making	Education
Last Responsible Moment	Opportunity Costs
Talent	Tradeoffs

Overview: Career Planning
Type	Career
Definition	The process of developing goals and an action plan for an individual's career.
Related Concepts	Career » Goals » Action Plan » Performance Management » Career Plan » Performance Review »