Focus Magazine - Fall 2012 - 5

FROM THE PRESIDENT Carol Wells

Career Development and YOUR Life
Each step along your career path is a time for
you to think about what is best for you
hat is career development? Career development is an ongoing, lifelong journey that helps us learn, develop and grow in our careers and our lives. It’s an opportunity to try new things and to explore a variety of directions that align skills, values, interests, motivations and aspirations that may change during a person’s professional life. We are each the architects of our career path. Options for career paths include developing further within our role, making lateral moves to other positions, working toward a promotion, working with greater exibility, pursuing additional education or planning for retirement. Each step along your career path is a time for you to think about what is best for you. Should you be thinking about moving up, laterally, diagonally or down to gain di erent and varied experiences that align with your life’s goals? Di erent career opportunities require an assessment of your competencies, skills and desires at a given time in your life. ey will also require di erent resources and developmental experiences. You may be thinking about taking a lateral move within a functional area or to a new area where the position is at the same level and typically requires a similar set of skills. Moving laterally can help you nd new challenges without making a major career change. Enrichment is another option when you may want to take on new assignments or vary your work without necessarily changing a job. is is a great opportunity for you to o er to do that something extra that allows you to re-energize your work, develop skills and experiences while continuing in your current job.

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Climbing to the next level of the career ladder with increasing responsibility is also an option. If you aspire for a promotion, you need to be ready to make a commitment to gain new skills and demonstrate your readiness for that next level of responsibility. Most experts feel that you should be bringing two-thirds of what the new job needs, giving you an opportunity to grow with the new one-third of requirements. You could also seek opportunities for rotations, internships and special projects outside of your current role, which would allow you to explore new positions without taking on that role. Personal situations play into career planning that involves relocation. It is also a factor that plays into a person either being able to pursue a position or requesting to explore other options that help resolve a personal situation. An individual may also be ready to take on less responsibility depending on what is happening in her life. Requesting to evaluate a realignment of less responsibility may be the right option when the person feels the need to do so. Whatever you are choosing to do in your career, always involve your manager. Your manager can be a wonderful resource about other positions, typically will have additional insight into company and organizational philosophies around movement and can also be a personal mirror for providing feedback on your readiness of other career aspirations. At the end of the day, it is up to each one of us, however, to think about where we are in our life and blend our career into our current scenario. I

Carol Wells is president of SPBT and senior director, Commercial Training and Development for Genentech, a member of the Roche Group. Email Carol at wells.carol@gene.com.

FOCUS | FALL 2012 | www.spbt.org

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Focus Magazine - Fall 2012

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