Personal Development Plan: a Guide for Job Aspirants

In today’s world, we need to keep growing; therefore, it is better to have more skills. As a job aspirant, you have to be confident and much more. You need to develop yourself to stand out and meet the expectations of the jobs you are going to apply for.

Highschools and college make us academically prepared, but there are other skills and creativity that you have to explore and develop on your own.

Developing yourself needs a consistent and endless effort. Building career, skills, habits, personality, and interest to keep up with the world. But having a personal development plan ensures that you do not burn yourself out amid all the growth and effort. 

A personal development plan helps us become the best version of ourselves. It brings balance to our life. It helps us to grow and make out time for ourselves.

What is Personal Development Plan?

A personal or self-development plan (PDP) is a detailed and written map that you make to achieve what you want in your life. It takes into account your ambitions, personal, academic, or career goals and includes an action plan to achieve them. The action plans encompass all your awareness, values, skills, education, and everything that you need to work on to accomplish your short or long-term goals. 

The plan breaks your vision or final goals into small achievable steps. By creating a self-development plan, you can reach your target with discipline and proper motivation. It is beneficial when preparing to apply for a job or have a career goal. Making a PDP for your jobs gives you a perspective of what you already have and what you need to advance in your career.       

Personal development can be a written document, a journal, or smartly formed table sheets. It holds in all the skills and objectives you will be working on or already have and the time limit you have for each of them.

Why Should You Make A Personal Development Plan?

Many of us struggle to find a proper ambition or choose a career path that we can successfully go ahead with. We also sometimes have a vague idea of what skills and objectives will lead to a successful career. Here is where a personal development plan comes into action.

1. It helps us sort out what we want to do with our career and life
2. It can help us make straight-forward goals depending on the career we choose.
3. It balances our work and personal life.
4. You will be able to do better in your career in lesser time
5. You can keep yourself motivated

What to Include in a Personal Development Plan?

A written PDP has blueprints along with sticky notes to complete your career mission. It contains every skill sets you have to achieve, objectives you have to complete. PDP be can be about doing further studies, career progress, choosing a new career path.

So when you know the end goals, you also have to note down what you need to get there. For example, do you need to do a particular course, do you need to lose weight, do you have to develop new skills, do you have to travel and so on. 

Make it organised so that you can flip through it and feel motivated.

1. Make a journal or a document. 
2. Make your mission clear.
3. Mention the objectives you need to accomplish.
4. Write out why you must achieve the objective goals.
5. Plan out the resources that you will need.
6. Set a fixed timeline for each objective.
7. Work on the plan and write your experience down in the PDP journal.

How to Work on Personal Development Plan?  

When you are a fresh graduate, a job seeker, or someone wanting to follow a new career aspiration, things can sometimes get chaotic or confusing. You might feel lost or fear how you will achieve what you want, and sometimes you are in a place you do not know at all what is the perfect career aspiration for yourself. A personal development plan makes you think about it, helps you organise your thoughts, gets you constructing your own plan to reach your career aspiration. 

There are many elements you need to consider while forming a functional PDP: 

1. Find your vision

Imagine where you want to see yourself in the next five to ten years of career and financial wise. You can also choose vision with a smaller time frame. You have to think realistically and also give into your ambition. Whatever you want to achieve, remember that everything is tough to come by. You have to work hard for your dreams to have them fully. So choose freely, passionately, and wisely. 

The best way to do so is to know yourself, what do you want to become, your knowledge about it, the skills you have or need. A self-assessment is a great way to find what you want.

Note down with bold letters in your journal your main vision or your ultimate goal. Write whatever comes to your mind related to it, such as: 

• What you feel about it
• Why do you want to achieve it
• What are your skills
• What are your habits 
• How will completing the vision change your life

2. Research what you need to achieve the vision

Next comes what you need to do according to fulfil your vision. Research all the qualities, skills, education, places that will lead you to the dreams. Note them down. This will form your short-term goals or milestones. To get to your ultimate goals, know what you already have and what things you need to work for.

Short-list the goals into sections like the goals you have already completed and goals you need to work on, and goals that are entirely new for you.

You can ask yourself or look around answers for to these questions:

• What skill or attributes do I need to get the job or advance in my career?
• If having trouble with a particular aspect of your career or job, what are the things you can do to get out of it?
• If you want to go to a different country, do you need to learn their language or how to communicate with them?

Look at your lackings and weaknesses, what skills you find hard to get, how to get financial stability to achieve your goals, the incompetencies, your place of living suitable for your vision or not, etc. Everything that can be a liability notes them down.

3. Prioritise your goals or objectives

Compare your researched goals and your obstacles to forming a more refined idea of what you need to work on immediately. Things that need more of your attention and effort should be your priority. For example, if you want to prepare yourself for giving job interviews, you lack communication skills or get nervous, you can start taking speaking or communication class where they teach to talk more freely.  

Be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timely) with your objectives and goals. If your goals are SMART, you can keep records of them easily in your PDP, and it will also be easier to achieve them. 

You can take one goal at a time, or if you want to be on the go, you can work on two to three goals at a time.

4. Set up a timeline

To avoid procrastination, you should always give realistic time limits for each goal. This will also keep you motivated and challenged. Ensure that you are completing your objectives in the given time frame.

It is also crucial to know when you won’t achieve the goal, when is the time the goals will benefit you the most to advance.

You need to set a realistic timeline; for example, if you want graphic designing skills, you need at least three months to learn the basic techniques. So set your timeline according to the goals need not yours.

Keep track of your periodical progress, put an entry in your PDP, how far you are with your goal.

5. Identify Obstacles and Opportunities

Sometimes external or personal issues can hinder your progress. Identify them and look at what you can do to solve those problems. 

There will often be given opportunities that you should grab right away to get a boost up in your career progression. 

6. Mark the milestones

Once you have recognised all your objectives, start to work on them. Note where it is taking you. Write down how you feel about the progress. 

Prepare a milestone list; each time you accomplish a goal, you can tick it or add a picture of yours in the PDP journal. This will help you look at how far you have come and how far you need to go to be successful. Covering up the milestones will help you be more confident about yourself and inspire you to go ahead.

7. Do not get demotivated

Do not be too engaged in just structuring your career goals. Take care of yourself and your personal life and health. This will keep you motivated. When you have achieved all your goals, look at how far you have come. Look at your progress, see if you have reached where you have imagined yourself. 

If you do not find yourself where you want to be, do not feel demotivated. Work on the plan a bit more, expand it and look at what you can improve to be there.

Final Thoughts

Achieving life goals can look intriguing, but there is nothing that a little bit of planning cannot solve. When you start planning, you might feel that you lack everything, but you do not. We all have some basic attributes that will always help us to take the next step. So get yourself working on a personal development plan right away, no matter wherever you are in life.