Career Development in IT

Career Development is the way in which individuals manage their careers within and between organisations.

It takes into account the psychological, sociological, educational, physical, economic and chance factors that influence the possibilities in the lifespan of the individual.

In simple terms, career development is you thinking about where you want to go in your working life and how you are going to get there!

Taking control of your career development is becoming more and more important nowadays as the traditional concept of progression up an ordered hierarchy is being faded out. In this new environment, security lies not in employment but in employability. In order to increase employability individuals are beginning to extend their learning much further into their careers – resulting in the relatively new term ‘lifelong learning’.

How to manage your career development?

There are 3 key elements to managing your career development

Information on opportunities available to you

What is it you want to do? Do you know what type of careers would suit your interests, characteristics and sociological ideas? Psychometric testing is a great new way to learn more about yourself and give you a few ideas as to what career path could suit you.

To find out more about Psychometric testing and to take a FREE test please click here.

So you have an idea of what you want to do, you now need to look in to what you need to do to get there and how you can gain the relevant qualifications and experience. Using services such as the Home Learning College can be a huge benefit in this stage. Home Learning College and other similar organisations offer a diverse range of professional courses that are designed to be undertaken alongside current employment in order for you to maintain your income whilst developing your future employability.

These types of services are great for gaining a qualification, but how do you know what qualifications you actually need? Looking at job descriptions of current vacancies matching the job title you want is a great place to start – see what employers are asking for and work hard to match it.

To search current job descriptions please click here.

The ability to review the options

Now you have the information as to how to move on to the next stage in your career, you have to review which elements are essential and those which you can afford. You need to rank them as to priority and only take on manageable chunks at a time.

The ability to turn information in to action

Now you have reviewed your options, it simply remains to turn them into action. Many people get to this stage and go no further, but without putting your decisions in to action you won’t see the career development you were looking for.