Achieving success in your career is essential for personal and financial growth. A well-crafted career plan can align your qualifications and interests, leading to fulfillment and financial stability. However, discovering your passion and building a plan around it can be a challenging process. Some people are able to make a career out of their passion, while others may struggle to find satisfaction in their chosen profession. If you’re currently pursuing a career but feeling unfulfilled or under-compensated, it’s important to re-evaluate your career plan and explore new opportunities.

Passion, Career, Job, and Career Plan

Passion is the cornerstone of success. It gives you the drive to go on in face of adversities.

A job offers financial stability for you and your family, while a career is a broader, long-term perspective on your professional development. It can involve multiple jobs in similar or different fields, across various companies. Today, it’s common for individuals to change careers multiple times throughout their lifetime, as well as hold several jobs within those careers. With the rapid advancement of technology and the increasing use of AI, it’s likely that many jobs that currently exist will no longer be in demand in the next decade or so. It’s important to keep this in mind when planning your career.

Career Plan

In a rapidly changing business landscape driven by technology, it’s important to have a solid career plan to stay ahead of the curve. The jobs which are in demand today are likely to be obsolete in next 5-10 years. However, it’s important to remember that success is not a destination, but a journey. A well-rounded career plan should be based on three pillars:

1. Self-assessment

The starting point for your career plan is self-assessment to understand what you are good at and what ignites your passion. When you are planning your career you have to love the process, not the destination. I want to be an athlete like Virat Kohli, a footballer like Messi or Ronaldo or a singer like Adele. But if I don’t like getting up early in the morning and spending hours on the ground exercising and practicing I won’t be able to make a name for myself. I can’t be a doctor if I am afraid of blood, I can’t be an engineer if I am afraid to handle grease and oil. I should love crunching numbers if I want to be a great accountant.

If you are struggling to find your passion keep experimenting and don’t worry about failures. If you are fresh out of college don’t worry about failures, keep trying your tenacity will lead you to your path of success.

ii. Career Choices

Technology today is disrupting our lives, and professions, many careers are already threatened by driverless cars, and many new career choices like social media influencers, blogging, etc.,  which never existed have emerged. 

You need to check the career options and job opportunities that exist in the market. Select the career or job which matches your skill set and your passion. I want to be an athlete like Virat Kohli, a footballer like Messi or Ronaldo or a singer like Adele. But if I don’t like getting up early in the morning and spending hours on the ground exercising and practicing I won’t be able to make a name for myself. I can’t be a doctor if I am afraid of blood, I can’t be an engineer if I am afraid to handle grease and oil. I should love crunching numbers if I want to be a great accountant. In short, your career choice has to in inline with your preferred lifestyle.

iii. Acquiring Skills and Career Planning

Once you have identified the job in the area of your interest. You will be able to identify the skill gap concerning the skills required for the job and the skills you have, the gap between your values and organizational values. Now you have to plan to bridge the gap by acquiring the required skills. The principles of success are simple persistent effort, hard work, and discipline. 

Remember no success story is written without the failures. You have to continuously repeat the process of identifying the skill gap and keep learning till you achieve your goal.

Good Luck!