Professional Development: How to meet your goals in 2021

Introduction
Let’s talk about professional development!
Importance of professional development

Introduction

Make 2021 the year you take strides in your career. This year give a close look at your career and set some firm and measurable goals which can be tracked, monitored, and achieved. It all comes down to professional development, whether it is about choosing to opt for a more senior role or thinking about changing careers.

We will take a tour in this blog to know about professional development and why professional development isis professional development important. Furthermore, this blog is expected to provide you with insights into how professional development goals can be met in 2021.

Let’s talk about professional development!

Professional development is all about building new skills and gaining experience. Professional development helps in the growth of your career. This may apply to what you are doing currently in your job or may extend to the role you wish to pick up next. Now when it comes to professional development, it may mean acquiring it by education or training i.e., anything that leads to your career progression. Certain examples of professional development include:

• Continued education
• Skill-based training 
• Industry certifications
• Networking within the chosen industry
• Job assignments with increased duties and responsibilities
• Coaching
• Mentoring and consultation

Importance of professional development

A career is not only about making more money. It also means avoiding stagnation in your career, paving the way for your growth up the ladder, and making it easy for career progression and transition. Professional development is important because it expands your knowledge base and allows you to stay competitive in your profession. Below are the highlights about the importance of professional development and how it is expected to help you grow in your career:

• Professional development enables you to keep abreast with the latest trends and updates relevant to your industry, giving you an edge in your field of work. 
• Actively pursuing professional development means staying relevant and up-to-date in your workplace and the outside competitive world. 
• Professional development improves your confidence and adds to your credibility by learning new skills and attaining professional designations.
• Continued professional development allows you to make more meaningful contributions to your team and to become more effective at your workplace. 
• A focused approach towards pursuing professional development opens up doors for new possibilities, increases earning potential, and improves the scope to get hired.

Professional development isn’t just important to you;, it is helpful for your employer too. Employers value you more if you expand and enhance your skills beyond your current role or scope of work. Moreover, you prepare yourself for more and create a better space for yourself in the job market.

Professional development offers various benefits depending on which stage of the career you areare you at. Let’s have a brief look and understand those. Enumerated below:

• Suppose you have just stepped in as a “fresher,” and you are new to the whole new world of working-At this point of entry into the work arena. In that case, professional development might mean gaining basic knowledge, new concepts and skills, and initial experience within your industry and the job you want. Since you are in your learning phase, it may be easy for you to pick up relevant skills at the time of entry into your new job.
• If you have just stepped in as a “fresher” and you are new to the whole new world of working-At this point of entry into the work arena, professional development might just mean gaining basic knowledge, new concepts and skills, and initial experience within your industry and job you want. Since you are in your learning phase it may be easy for you to pick up relevant skills at the time of entry into your new job.
• If you have spent a few years at work and are midway through your career- professional development at this stage may be more relevant if you are looking at career changes or are willing to pursue career progression opportunities. You may be willing to explore professional development if you are in your current role for a while and believe that professional development can lead you in the right direction to achieve this objective.
• If you are an experienced professional,- professional development for you could mean chalking out a path to get into more senior roles and fetching pay hikes and monetary benefits based on newly acquired skills. It could also mean a complete career change or transition into other senior roles based on your career plan.

While we understand professional development and its relevance and importance in your career, let’s talk in a more focused way about how will you achieve your goal of professional development in 2021

I am sure you are struggling to know the starting point. This step-by-step guide will help you get clarity on how to proceed to meet your professional development goal this year.

1. Set a clear goal of what you want to achieve 

It would mean setting clear objectives in mind. This starts with you having clarity about what you wish to achieve in the year 2021. Are you looking for a promotion, wanting to move up at the leadership level, pay hike, role change, or a job shift? These questions will assist you in rightly planning the professional development you wish to work on. Now, these are long term goals, and choice about professional development, in this case, will be different in case you have a short-term goal to be achieved. The short-term goal could be developing communication skills to be more prominent and impressive in internal meetings, learning new skills and software to handle an upcoming internal project or just learning another language that will provide you with an edge to interact with your internal clients, considering your company requires a third language to be spoken. Once you are well equipped and have a clear goal in your mind about what you want to achieve, it will be way easy for you to decide on professional development. You will hence be able to choose the courses or training that will enable you to meet your end objective. In the end, it is always a good idea to match your goals with your skill sets

2. Identify your weaknesses

Once you have clarity about your goal to be achieved, you should work on identifying your weaknesses, i.e., the areas you want to work on. This would require some research to understand the courses or programs or pieces of training that would help you strengthen your weak areas and give you a sense of the skillset that you need to acquire to be able to leap into your career. There are various industry level certifications and programs that can assist you to meet this objective.

3. Plan your development and develop yourself

Upon having set a clear goal and after identifying the weak areas that need to be worked upon, it’s time for you to assess your development plan and how to go about developing yourself. Developing yourself mainly includes focusing on three main areas, which are knowledge, confidence and communication. This is a stage where you develop the missing skills by making an appropriate choice that will further your career. It’s about preparing a roadmap to progress in your career in this step. This roadmap will contain the skills, strategy, and education you may want to gain to achieve your professional goals. This is the time for true action. It is more relevant to track actions to achieve the goals than committing a mistake of tracking goals with inaction. It is the action that takes things forward. 

Another important thing to keep in mind is that it is never too late to start developing yourself. This is the key to your success in the long run, i.e., professional development. Don’t delay it, no year is better to start achieving the goal of professional development than this year 2021.

Obtaining certification for professional development

Completing a certification for professional development reflects on a real commitment that you show towards your career. It also shows that you are determined to become industry-ready by acquiring skills that employers seek. Training and making use of learning opportunities should be a part of your plan when you decide to take advantage of professional development to sharpen your knowledge and skills and to make your presence felt in the industry and at your workplace in specific.

The professional world is competitive and is constantly changing. Professional development and continual learning have become far more important now than perceived earlier. Professional development has become imperative for an individual to become successful and achieve his career goals. This should be your goal for 2021, and professional development certainly will make you get headway in the long run.

0 Source: https://www.mygreatlearning.com/blog/professional-development-how-to-meet-your-goals-in-2021/