BASIC STEPS TO CAREER DEVELOPMENT

Allow me to suggest, based upon my own life experience and observing the world around me, that there’s a hierarchical process of steps and stages in the career development process that evolve something like I’ve outlined below.
Why is it important to give thought to stages in the process? Well, for one there’s the matter of investing tens of thousands of dollars and Naira's in a university education, an investment where the odds of success might be improved by increasing the certainty that your “market timing” – your child’s readiness to profit from the expense of higher education – is well timed.

Where are you or your child in the process of developing their career and career skills:?

1. The “thinking about a career” stage. It’s the point where you realize that childhood and dependency may (will) come to an end, so you may have to do something to fill the rest of your life. You really don’t know much of anything about work or the demands of life.  You know very little about “the job”. However, when asked, you know that having an answer . . . sounds grown up? It’s the “I want to be an astronaut” or “I want to be famous” stage.
2. The “I think I want to be” stage of career development. Emphasis on “I think” – suggesting that some real thought has been applied to the answer. Of course there are levels of “I think”, the depth of which can be quickly measure by most simply by asking a few questions. The more you know about the career the better the questions and the degree of illumination.
3. The “I believe” stage, as in “the level of certainty is increasing” but . . . and it’s a big one . . . there may be no – zero – direct experience “of the job”. Belief tends to be something untested by experience.
4. The advanced “I want to be a . . (career/job/profession)” stage, a statement that tends to be made in a somwhat more mature and convincing voice. At this stage the speaker can give concrete reasons why the have made the career decision, why the career is right for them, etc. Again, an absence of direct involvement in the career path (summer job, internship, time spend at job as a volunteer, etc.) tends to lend . . or detract . . credence from the statement.
5. The “I choose to be . . and exclude” stage. As an example, choosing a college major or college degree program. Usually there is the intial “choice” (more of a suggestion or concrete idea) make when applying to college. However, until the trial by fire of college level chemistry or organic chemistry, or certain engineering classes, there is still is room for re-thinking. Again, college life isn’t work life, but once a student is well into their second or third year of college the language of choosing a career is still in flux. The words chosen or a look on one’s face to help to identify the level of clarity, certainty, etc.
6. The “I am” stage, as in I AM a lawyer or I AM a nurse. It’s the voice of a recent graduage or new initiate into a career.
7. The “I am and I choose it all” stage of career choices. It’s the stage where you have qualified for the work and have practiced the art for awhile. There are similar stages in other avenues of life – like marriage or child raising – the point where you know you are in it for the long haul, having seen the good, tasted the bad, and encountered the ugly . . . and not turned and fled. And any of you, with any miles on you, know exactly what I’m talking about.

So, when you are engaging someone today or tomorrow and the subject of making career choices comes up, listen with a keen ear and look with a keen eye.  Listen for and encourage an awareness in the person speaking about their career choices to make the next move up the hierarchy.
For what it’s worth, from what I can see about the world today, one of the biggest “missing elements” in successful career choice making is an absence of direct experience “with the career” – the work environment, the nature of co-workers, the demands of the job, etc.  If you can help bridge that divide – the gap between thinking about a career and having a degree of experience “with the career” – you may be giving someone one of the biggest gifts of their lives.

TFF