What are you doing after graduation? After graduation, most of the students experience the job search. Everyone is aware that in today’s world having a job became a prime necessity. Career development is a continuous process which includes having a job, meeting skills requirement, meeting the expectation of our life and finally retirement. To meet a long-term goal, it is necessary that your deliverables should align with your long-term goal. In such a case, your first five years of your career plays an important role. A five-year plan is ideal to start with, as five years are enough to reach bigger goals while working for and achieving smaller goals.
In most of the cases, the first two to three years get wasted due to an improper job. In this duration, job shuffling can be seen more frequently. The main reason behind this is, most of the students give more priority to their first placement rather following one’s own interest. After changing two-three job, then they decide their main domain to explore themselves in long-term. In this process, they waste their crucial time which was to be utilized for skills development. And the first five-year plan extends to seven or eight years. You should aware of the mistakes that most of the people do at the start of their career.
Here are the important things that you should focus in the first five years of your career.
1. Follow your interest
- This is very important because if you don’t follow your interest then make sure that you will not be productive in the long run.
- And the main thing is, wait for the opportunities in your domain. Don’t give priority to the first placement if it is not your area of interest.
- It is very much negotiable to wait for two to three month after graduation to get a job in your domain.
- Sometime it may happen that people are not clear with their area of interest. After working a few months they realize that their area of interest is different from the current role.
- As a result, they start jumping from one company to another in search of a good job. In this, they waste their crucial time which was to be utilized to form a base for the long-term goal.
2. Finding your skills
- The first thing about career planning is finding out your skills. Skill is a thing that we learned how to do.
- Identifying our skills help to find us our ideal job. After getting a job in your area of interest, now its time to work on skill development.
- Skill development is a continuous process. Hence you should start focusing on skill which will help you in achieving the long-term goal.
- Skill development includes finding out what is important in your job and what kind of decision maker you are.
3. Do specialization
- Everyone knows that graduation has a very broad aspect. But in corporate we have to focus on a specific domain.
- So along with doing job, you can also opt for specialization in your domain. This will boost your career.
- You can also think of doing further education. Some companies too offer to their employees.
- You should also attain seminars and network at conferences with other leaders and innovators.
- Doing specialization will explore more opportunities in your career. It will make your foundation strong on which you can build a strong career.
4. Connecting Dots
- Keep on top what is happening in your professional and personal life that would impact your career, your goal and development plans.
- It is very important that your short-term goals should align with the long-term goal. Otherwise, your output will change at the end.
- It is very much possible that you have to change your planning. So to avoid sudden change you have to keep a track of each and every activity.
- Make sure that you keep coming back to your plans and update it with consideration for progress and the growth of your career.
- You need to be very flexible but stay focused on your output. Continuously check and realign your career objectives with your definition of career success.
5. Stay motivated
- When you have a focus on long-term, the most important thing is you need to stay focused and motivated.
- You should keep one mentor for yourself who can keep you aligned with your goal.
- Freshers should understand the importance of having a mentor. A mentor is the one who will share their experience and help you to avoid the same mistakes that most of the beginners make.
- The simple way to stay focused is to have a purpose in life. Your purpose will keep you motivated.
- It is important to stay motivated to keep moving towards your career development.
