Career Development

Career Planning
Presented by: Darla Joyce V. Quiballo
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 Introduction
Career Development

● Career development is intentional career planning and should be

viewed as a critical and deliberate life process involving both the
individual and the employer. It provides individuals with choices about
career outcomes rather than leaving it to chance. Thus, career
development is about career exploration, opportunities, and change.
● Career development should begin with an assessment of self as well as
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one’s work environment, job analysis, education, training, job search

and acquisition, and work experience. This is known as career
planning.
 Justifications for Career
Development
● Reduces employee attrition
● Provides equal employment opportunity
● Increases opportunities for employee growth
● Improves quality of work life
● Improves competitiveness of the organization
● Avoids obsolescence and builds new skills
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● Promotes evidence-based practice

 Introduction
Career Planning

● Career planning includes evaluating one’s strengths and weaknesses,

setting goals, examining career opportunities, preparing for potential
opportunities, and using appropriate developmental activities.
● Career plans are dynamic and should be reviewed and revised as
personal and professional circumstances change. Career planning is
important for nurses at all levels because it can be useful to evaluate a
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nurse’s present work situation and shape his or her future in the
nursing profession.
 Career Planning
● Career planning in nursing should begin with an individual’s decision about
educational entry level for practice and quickly expand to developing advanced skills
in an area of nursing practice. Career planning should include, at minimum, a
commitment to the use of evidence-based practice, learning new skills or bettering
practice with the assistance of role models and mentors, staying aware of and being
involved in professional issues, and furthering one’s education.
● The initial step in strategic career planning in nursing is developing specific,
measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely, or SMART, goals. Once goals are
established, nurses should identify specific action steps necessary to meet each goal
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and set a timeline for completing each step. Before implementing the action steps,
nurses need to take inventory of available resources and consider who and what will
help implement each step. The last step is identifying the indicators of success. This
step requires nurses to determine the indicators that will help evaluate whether or not
the goals were met (Donner & Wheeler, 2001).
 3 Stages of Career (Shirey, 2009)
Phase 1: Promise (first 10 years)
● Initial experiences in the promise phase are essential building blocks for a long-
term, successful career.

Phase 2: Momentum (11 to 29 years)

● Continuing to learn and grow, choosing multiple experiences, and becoming
visible in the profession are all important for continued success.

Phase 3: Harvest (last years of career)

● While continuing to grow and learn, nurses also share their experiences and
expertise with younger nurses and leave a legacy for the next generation.
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Shirey (2009) further posits that a career doesn’t just happen: it is planned and
cultivated.
 Job Search

The first step, after you’ve completed your basic nursing

education, is to select your first job.
The purpose of this job is to learn as much as you can
and to perfect your clinical skills. Additionally, you will
make contacts among your colleagues and
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supervisors.
 Here are some criteria for choosing your first job.
● You will have opportunities to hone your skills in a clinical area of interest.
● You will learn from more experienced clinicians who are willing to teach you.
● The culture of the organization and, especially, the administration are
supportive of nursing.
● The organization’s mission fits your values (e.g., a teaching hospital that serves
the poor).
● There are opportunities for advancement.

No job is perfect, just as no relationship, home, career, or family is perfect. Use the
above criteria to assess the position and the organization. If the position and the
organization fit most of them, especially the criteria most important to you,
consider the following additional criteria.
● The schedule fits your lifestyle.
● The institution is near your home.
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The least important criteria for selecting your first job is the salary.
 Job Search
1. Clearly define your skills and interests.
2. Create a powerful resume.
3. Strategize your job search.
4. Do your research.
5. Practice for your interview.

Bonus tip: Be ready to fail.

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 Sources of Job Leads
• Networking
• Professional Organizations
• College Career/ Alumni Officers
• Cold Contact/ Direct Mail
• Job/ Career Fairs
• Online Jobs/ Job Board
• Corporate Career Center
• Recruit/ Headhunter
• Want Ads
• Pounding the Pavements/ Hitting the Streets
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 Networking

● The art of building alliances

● Chat rooms and Web forums

● Social Networking Websites
● Mailing List
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 Professional/ Trade Organizations

● Every career field has at least one

● Offer some sort of job posting/ resume exchange program
● One way you can find a organization
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 College Career/ Alumni Offices

● Use Alumni in your field who would be willing to help you advance your career.
● Contact the professionals for your alma mater’s career services and/or alumni
office
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 Cold Contact/ Direct Mail

● A lost art of job hunting

● Involves the job-hunter compiling a list of potential employers
o including business and trade periodicals, company directories, even the phone
book

● Collect key research on each company

o Lead managers
o HR managers

● Mail out a specifically-tailored cover letter and resume to each employer

● Target a direct mail campaign; mass mailings don’t work
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 Job/ Career Fairs

● Companies send employees to these fairs

o Meet and recruit top prospects

● Your Goal
o Prepare before hand and identify the key employers in attendance
o Develop a strategy for breaking through the clutter of other job-seekers
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 Online Job Sites/ Job Boards

● The trend in job-hunting, at least fro the job-seekers perspective

● Should just be one small source of your job leads – not your only source
● Three basic categories of job sites are available to job-seekers
o Big “general” job sites
o Industry-specific niche job sites
o Geographic-specific job
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 Corporate Career Centers

● One of the most fastest growing sources of job leads

● Often includes:
o Job opening
o Guidelines for submitting job-search materials
o A wealth information about the company
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 Recruiters/ Headhunters

● Professionals who are employed by companies to screen and select the most
qualified candidates for positions the company has open
● Avoid any employment agency where the applicant must pay the fee
● Work for the employer, not for you
● Must have the qualities their clients are looking for
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 Want ads

● At one time, the main source of job leads for job-seekers

● However, as more companies now post job openings on their corporate sites
and/or with online job sites
● The importance of want ads has declined
● Can be helpful to those seeking entry-level positions
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 Pounding the Pavement/ Hitting the Streets

● The oldest method of job-hunting and developing job leads

o Entry-level positions and blue-collar jobs
o A specific geographic area
o Going door-to-door and submitting job applications to employers

● Useful if you are relocating

o Can make a trip prior to moving and spend that entire time submitting applications
and meeting with prospective employers
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 Developing a Resumé
A resumé is a record of a nurse’s education, employment history,
accomplishments, and achievements. A well-designed and well-thought-
out resumé can help a new nurse graduate gain an advantage over others.
A resumé must present a concise picture of the nurse’s strengths,
accomplishments, and experiences. Using headings guides the nurse
leader and manager in finding specific information. The resumé should be
written and revised to showcase specific experiences and
accomplishments that match the position for which a nurse is applying.
The resumé is also a screening tool used by employers to select
applicants and make promotion decisions; therefore, maintaining a current,
professional resumé is a career-planning necessity for health-care
professionals and should not be undertaken lightly.
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 General Guidelines for Resumé Preparation
● Keep the resumé 1 to 2 pages long (Slack, n.d.).
● Keep your writing concise and clear.
● Target the job you desire and your qualifications with what you write. The
average resumé receives only a few seconds of attention from recruiters so
make important points stand out.
● Type the document in a single-font format that is easy to read (12-point font or
larger is recommended).
● Use bulleted points or sentences.
● Include educational background, work history, awards or honors received,
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scholarly achievements such as publications and presentations, and

community service activities.
 General Guidelines for Resumé Preparation
● Do not include personal information such as marital status, age, whether you have
children, ethnicity, or religious affiliations.
● Maximize your strong points and minimize your weaknesses.
● Do not overstate your accomplishments because doing so places your credibility
at great risk.
● Use good grammar, correct punctuation, and proper sentence structure.
Typographic errors suggest you may not be serious about the job application or
that th
● Try to avoid overuse of “confidence inspiring” words like passionate, driven, or
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results-oriented as those words have little meaning without context. Instead, keep
your resumé direct and to the point and show, do not tell how you accomplish
things (Slack, n.d.).e quality of your work will be substandard.
 General Guidelines for Resumé Preparation
● Use high-quality, heavy white, or off-white paper to print the resumé.
● Consider adding a splash of color to your black-and-white resumé to make it
“pop” out from your competition but do not go overboard (Slack, n.d.). Black and
another color is good enough. Use the color on your headings and keep your bullet
points black.
● Include a cover letter (whether by mail or e-mail), addressed to a specific individual
when possible, to introduce yourself, briefly highlight key points of the resumé, and
make a positive first impression.
● Do include a professional objective or goal statement specific to your desired job.
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● Make sure only to list people who know you well for quite some time like 3 years as
your list of referees (Resumé 2015, 2015/2016b). You should also inform the
referees that you have listed them in your resumé as your referees so that when
they are contacted, they do not start wondering who the person they are being
asked about is.
 Professional Portfolio
● A professional portfolio, which all nurses should maintain, can be described as a
collection of materials that document a nurse’s competencies and illustrate the
expertise of the nurse. The professional portfolio typically contains a number of
core components, such as biographical information; educational background
certifications achieved; employment history; a resumé; a competence record or
checklist; personal and professional goals; professional development
experiences, presentations, consultations, and publications;professional and
community activities; honors and awards; and letters of thanks from patients,
families, peers, organizations, and others.

● All nurses should maintain a portfolio to reflect their professional growth

throughout their career.
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 Professional Portfolio
● Maintaining a professional portfolio avoids lost opportunities to save documents
because professional nurse should always have documentation readily available
to pursue a promotion, to consider a new position, or to apply for another position
in their present employment. Sinclair, Bowen, and Donkin (2013) note, however,
that for the professional portfolio to truly have value, it must be more than just a
collection of evidence of accomplishments; it must include reflection and be
actively used as a tool to promote professional growth throughout one’s career.
Only then will it promote a continuous cyclic process of professional development
that supports the maintenance of continued competence..
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 Did you know?
Elephants and storms.

Did you know that elephants can sense storms?

Elephants may be able to detect a thunderstorm from

hundreds of miles away, and will head towards it, looking for
water.
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 Management Development

● Management development is a planned system of training and

developing people so that they acquire the skills, insights, and attitudes
needed to manage people and their work effectively within the
organization. Management development is often referred to as
succession planning. Many nurses feel uncertain that they have the skills
needed to be effective managers, and they lack confidence that the
decision making, interpersonal, and organizational skills they learned as
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staff nurses can translate to the management role

 Management Development
The skill sets needed by leader-managers in the year 2020 will be even more
complex than they are today and that contemporary nursing and health-care organizations
must begin now to create the educational models and management development
programs necessary to prepare the next generation of leader-managers. Huston (2008)
suggests that essential nurse-leader competencies for 2020 include having a global
perspective or mindset regarding health care and professional nursing issues; technology
skills that facilitate mobility and portability of relationships, interactions, and operational
processes; expert decision-making skills rooted in empirical science; the ability to create
organization cultures that permeate quality health care and patient/worker safety;
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understanding and appropriately intervening in political processes; highly developed

collaborative and team building skills; the ability to balance authenticity and performance
expectations; and being able to envision and proactively adapt to a health-care system
characterized by rapid change and chaos.
 Management Development
Support for such management development programs by the organization should
occur in two ways. First, top-level management must do more than bear the cost of
management development classes. They must create an organizational structure that allows
managers to apply their new knowledge. Therefore, for such programs to be effective, the
organization must be willing to practice a management style that incorporates sound
management principles.
Second, training outcomes improve if nursing executives are active in planning and
developing a systematic and integrated program. Whenever possible, nursing administrators
should teach some of the classes and, at the very least, make sure that the program supports
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top management philosophy. Just as nurses are required to be certified in critical care before
they accept a position in a critical care unit (CCU), so too should nurses be required to take
part in a management development program before their appointment to a management
position. This requires early identification and grooming of potential management candidates.
 Management Development
● The first step in the process would be an appraisal of the present management team
and an analysis of possible future needs. The second step would be the establishment of
a training and development program.

● The inclusion of social learning activities also is a valuable part of management

development. Management development will not be successful unless learners have
ample chance to try out new skills. Providing potential managers with didactic
management theory alone inadequately prepares them for the attitudes, skills, and
insights necessary for effective management. Case studies, management games,
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transactional analysis, and sensitivity training are also effective in changing attitudes
and increasing self-awareness. All of these techniques appropriately use social learning
theory strategies.
 The Organization’s Role in Employee Career
Development
● Organizations also have some responsibility to assist employees with their
career development. One such responsibility is the creation of career paths and
advancement/career ladders (a structured sequence of job positions through
which a person can progress in an organization) for employees. It must also
attempt to match position openings with appropriate people. This includes
accurately assessing employees’ performance and potential in order to offer
the most appropriate career guidance, education, and training.
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 Organizational Responsibilities:
• Integrating needs. The human resources department, nursing division, nursing units,
and education department must work and plan together to match job openings with the
skills and talents of present employees.
• Establishing career paths. Career paths must not only be developed but must also be
communicated to the staff and implemented consistently. When designing career
paths, each successive job in each path should contain additional responsibilities and
duties that are greater than the previous jobs in that path. Each successive job also
must be related to and use previous skills.
• Once career paths are established, they must be communicated effectively to all
concerned staff. What employees must do to advance in a particular path should be
very clear. Although various forms of career ladders have existed for some time, they
are still not widely used. This problem is not unique to nursing. Even when health-care
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organizations design and use a career structure, the system often breaks down once
the nurse leaves that organization.
 Organizational Responsibilities:
• Disseminating career information. The education department, human resources
department, and unit manager are all responsible for sharing career information;
however, employees should not be encouraged to pursue unrealistic goals.
• Posting job openings. Although this is usually the responsibility of the human
resources department, the manager should communicate this information, even
when it means that one of the unit staff may transfer to another area. Effective
managers know who needs to be encouraged to apply for openings and who is
ready for more responsibility and challenges.
• Assessing employees. One of the benefits of a good appraisal system is the
important information that it gives the manager on the performance, potential, and
abilities of all staff members. The use of short- and long-term coaching will give
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managers insight into their employees’ needs and wants so that appropriate career
counseling can proceed.
 Organizational Responsibilities:
• Providing challenging assignments. Planned work experience is one of the most
powerful career development tools. This includes jobs that temporarily stretch
employees to their maximum skill, temporary projects, assignment to committees,
shift rotation, assignment to different units, and shift charge duties.
• Giving support and encouragement. Because excellent subordinates make
managers’ jobs easier, managers are often reluctant to encourage these
subordinates to move up the corporate ladder or to seek more challenging
experiences outside the manager’s span of control. Thus, many managers hoard
their talent. A leadership role requires that managers look beyond their immediate
unit or department and consider the needs of the entire organization. Leaders
recognize and share talent.
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 Organizational Responsibilities:
• Developing personnel policies. An active career development program often results
in the recognition that certain personnel policies and procedures are impeding the
success of the program. When this occurs, the organization should reexamine
these policies and make necessary changes.
• Providing education and training.
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Thank you!
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