The Career Master Plan

The Added Value of Outplacement

 Most often, the clients we work with in our Career Transition Service have lost their jobs because their person, their personality and the corporate organization they’ve been working for no longer match. There can be a variety of reasons for this:

1. Employees have neglected their own personal development, and therefore cannot adjust to the changing requirements at work.
2. They are not prepared for the fact that their job has changed in its specific technical requirements, or that it has become less important in the overall business structure.
3. The company no longer recognizes the potential of this employee, because he or she has been doing the same job, without facing up to new challenges.

 

Taking this into consideration, any Career Transition Service will ultimately be limited in its success, if it seeks only “to manage steps toward landing new employment.” This kind of service will only be effective in creating a sustainable future for the client, if it analyzes the capacity for further career development, by assessing the client’s professional potential, and by developing a master plan for personal development, and thus becoming more of a Career Advice Service.

A master plan for personal career development describes a client’s medium and long-term career goals, and the career strategy that is necessary to reach these objectives, step by step. The client’s next job, in what has now become a “new employment” should fit into this overall strategy, and thus be the right next step for our client’s career advancement.

Taking stock of the client’s current professional situation, the so-called career balance, is a key factor in the development of a master plan. In this analysis, the personality of the client and his professional history is recorded in detail, focusing on these aspects: a) qualifications, b) skills, c) strengths and weaknesses, d) professional achievements, f) preferences, h) personal branding, h) values and goals in life.

Based on the profile thus obtained, the professional potential of the client can be clarified, the potential, here, representing the client’s unused development opportunities. This usually opens up multiple professional development goals that are viable. One of the top priorities in this type of Career Advice Service is to determine these objectives, to evaluate and to establish the client’s number one goal and preference for their target corridor.

The challenge for our Career Advice service, with regard to the implementation of this number one career goal, will subsequently be to create a master plan, together with the client.

This master plan describes the essential conditions and procedures for the implementation of the career objective, elaborating in detail the following topics:

1. Preferred features of future activities
2. Desired position
3. Profile overview tailored to the desired position
4. Personal branding (for the career path)
5. Challenges and barriers that could arise
6. Recommended training and education
7. General recommendations for professional/personal development
8. Establishing important contacts for the client’s further career
9. Time and action plan, broken down in single steps

The master plan is a document representing the client’s status quo, as well as an overview of further development activities. According to our experience, this plan should be reviewed with the coach of the Career Advice Program every six months.  It should then be re-assessed and updated on a yearly basis. This will guarantee that clients, in the next stages of their career, will make on-going and success-oriented adjustments to their career activities, and will no longer have to experience not fitting into changing organizations.

 

Peter Geide

(Senior Consultant)

Career Masterplan