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How to Develop a Career Plan

Written by: Evie Courtier
Published on: 1 Mar 2024

career plan

The world of business support encompasses a myriad of opportunities for career progression, whether you’re currently employed in a PA job, EA job, or as an Office Manager. If you’re thinking about taking the next step, creating yourself a career plan helps you to breach the initial hurdle of ‘where do I start?’, and ‘when should I take the next opportunity?’. Setting out clear intentions for your short-term and long-term objectives, and forming a strategy for future career progression, helps you maximise your time and reach your full potential.

Firstly, what is a career plan?

A career plan is a strategic tool that is used to guide you toward your career goals. It contains clearly defined, well thought out objectives with actions to achieve them. This career development tool will help steer you in the right direction, aid your decision on whether you need to spend time enhancing skills through training and development, which opportunities you should seek, and the best time to take them.

Once in place, your development plan becomes a continuous career tool, allowing you to review and update it before and/or after any significant career milestone.

So, how do you create a career plan?

1) Identify Your Goals

First things first, sit down and consider what it is you ultimately want to achieve in your career. Once thought through, note down your career goals - using a mindmap format often helps for your initial brainstorm. If you need help, pose yourself the go-to interview question of ‘where do I want to be in 5 years’ time’?. Extending this question to ‘10 years’, helps you visualise the bigger picture. The ‘how do I get there’ element isn’t necessary at this stage - having an idea of the bigger picture is simply an aid to put the small stepping stones in place later down the road.

If you’re an aspiring PA, currently working in an administrator role, identifying your dream outcome is the first step. As denoted in our PA job description, PAs require an accumulation of skills, acquired from prior positions, whether that’s an admin assistant role, administrator position, or secretary. Working in admin will have provided you with experience of working in a professional office environment, whilst developing strong soft transferable skills, from organisation, to communication and flexibility. Aiming to move into a PA role within the next five years is therefore a natural and achievable progressive step.

2) Assess Your Skills, Qualifications and Experience

Once you have identified your key career goals you can start to bridge the gap between where you are now and where you wish to be. In order to start putting the pieces in place, you will need to conduct a self-assessment of your current soft and technical skills, qualifications and experience.

Start by considering how you’re currently performing - what you are excelling at? Where do your weaknesses lie? From here you can evaluate the strengths and gaps in your skillset. Perhaps you need to upskill your knowledge on developing AI tools, working autonomously, or diary management. For more information on the in-demand skills across the profession, see our ‘Guide to Diary Management’.

Ask yourself the following key questions:

• What have I enjoyed doing in my prior roles?
• What soft and hard skills have I learned?
• What experience have I gained?
• What qualifications do I have?
• What do I had wish done differently or explored further?
• Ultimately, can I see myself doing this for the rest of my career?

3) Research and Identify Career Paths

Upon the evaluation of your skillset, start to explore job roles that match your expertise and preferences. Remember - this is an exploratory stage, so don’t be alarmed if your goals don’t align with the roles you’re seeking. This is why you are making a career plan in the first place; to identify the skills you need to achieve your goals and then put together a strategic plan to develop them.

Within this research stage, it’s wise to explore a myriad of avenues - are there certain office management roles that have caught your eye? Would you be better suited working in a project manager role, than a PA job?

As we know, the changing landscape of work with the rise of AI, return to office schemes, and development of responsibilities across certain roles, makes adaptability key. Giving yourself a sound understanding of alternative career paths and factoring these into your career plan, helps to futureproof your career.

4) Create Your Goals

The key to setting your career goals is to be specific. The more focussed the aim, the more information you gather, making it easier to understand how to achieve it. Ensure that you are setting yourself a timeframe or deadline to keep yourself on track, providing yourself with bespoke instructions on the actions you need to take.

We’ve detailed a career plan template below to help you create long- and short-term career plans.

We advise you to put together two types of career plan; short-term (6 months – 1 year) and long-term (5 - 10 years).

Long-term plan:

The long-term career plan is a useful tool to remind you of the bigger picture and what you are ultimately working towards. What are your key career milestones over the next 5 to 10 years?

Short-term plan

The short-term plan will be your main reference point to keep you on track as you progress through your career. This short-term career plan will consist of goals you are hoping to achieve in the near future, making them achievable over the period of 6 months - 1 year. For example, gaining particular experience or starting a new qualification. As an aspiring Legal PA, for example, you may consult the courses run by ILSPA.

Career Plan Template:

Each stage of your career plan should consist of the four sections below.

Career objective:

Remember, this needs to be ‘measurable’ so try to be as detailed as possible here: what is the ultimate role, position or job title? Think about the industry you want to work in, whether you want to be in industry or in practice, and whether you would like to relocate.

E.g. ‘I wish to become a Junior PA, earning £24,000 at a Media Company in London’.

To be completed by:

Use this section to set yourself a deadline or timeframe by which the goal should be achieved. If this is a short-term career goal, try to be more specific by setting yourself a date to complete this goal. If this is a long-term goal, a vaguer and more flexible timeline is acceptable.

E.g. ‘I wish to become a Junior PA, earning £24,000 at a Media Company in London within the next year’.

Actions to achieve this goal:

Use this section to list a few bullet points. Remember, these need to be realistic within the given timeframe. We advise listing between 3-5 smaller actions, such as signing up for an online course if your goal is to develop a particular skill necessary for promotion, or becoming a mentor if you are hoping to acquire managerial or leadership experience.

E.g.

• Understand the media industry: develop knowledge of media production and processes, from film and television, to other forms of content creation. Strive to grasp the concept of workflow, timelines, and key roles within production teams to demonstrate my ability to support media executives.
• Customise my CV: highlight my experiences and skills that align with the expectations of a junior PA role in a media company. Showcase relevant responsibilities, and achievements from my admin role that demonstrate my ability to handle tasks in a fast-paced and dynamic environment. Discover our ‘PA CV Template’ to help you master the art of CV writing.
• Conduct a social media course: digital and social media play a significant role in the media landscape - upskill myself in how to manage social media accounts, coordinate online content, and boost engagement.

Tools or resources required:

Use this section to list any resources that might be required for this career development goal.

Career coaching:

SecsintheCity works closely with Personal Career Management (PCM), to provide our audience with access to the UK's leading provider of career coaching programmes. Offering a personal service locally and remotely, clients benefit from one-to-one specialist advice on all aspects of career management, professional development and job hunting.

Personal Career Management are the career transformation experts and have helped thousands of people change their working lives for the better. Sign up for a free career review to:

• Be your best – by understanding your unique profile
• Explore your options
• Make smart decisions – clear, realistic and well-informed
• Land the job you want
• Manage your current situation

Jobs on SecsintheCity:

Ready to kick start your career? Apply to the latest PA job, EA job, and Office Manager jobs on SecsintheCity. Discover our dedicated business support blog, to help you build a leading CV, flourish in an interview, and keep up to date with industry insights and news.

Upload your CV to get headhunted today. We wish you the best of luck in your job search.