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What is career management?

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Posted by Your Guide on September 27, 2005 10:20 AM

American workers spend forty, fifty, even sixty hours or more on their jobs each week. To these workers, it is of the utmost importance that these hours are spent in something enjoyable and meaningful. What is it that makes a job fulfilling? How do you get a great job and is it easy to recognize when you have one? How can you have a career, a vocation, even a calling, instead of merely a job? These questions are the realm of career management.

Career management refers to employee attempts to take charge of their own careers. Instead of passively doing a job and stumbling into a career, career management employees define a career goal and work towards it.

Career management is an active and never-ending occupation. The employee is continually examining his own goals, passions, and principles in light of his current job and career. Even if he is in a specific job for forty years, this employee is continually developing his career—his skills, position, and responsibilities. He maintains the philosophy that a career is not something given to him by an employer, rather, a career is something that is inseparable from him—quite literally, his life’s work.

According to a 2004 survey released by the Society for Human Resource Management and Careerjournal.com, seventy-five percent of all employees are looking for new jobs. Many of these employees are only passively looking for a new job, but the survey results are still staggering—three of every four workers imagine themselves more content in a job different from the one they have. Employees who seek to manage their careers may be in this group looking for a new job, but more significantly, they are looking for a satisfying career.



Next Page: How should I choose a career field?

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