Take some responsibility for your career path

Most people are not doing any vital basic planning to make sure they have a viable career path for the future, says Carol Dallimore, general manager of OCG Consulting.

"Most of us just drift along," she says. "We do it with our insurances. We do it with our finances and we probably do it with our career planning just as much. We drift along hoping we'll never really have to do anything about it."

Dallimore says that simply hoping the company will look after your next career move is not the way to go.

"People need to take responsibility for their own development. You don't just sit back and wait for your boss to map out a brilliant career path for you. What you should be doing is pushing for development," she says.

Planning a career is now more important than ever as the global marketplace forces unforeseen changes on local businesses.

"People who don't plan just get surprises they don't like," says Dallimore. "Quite often they'll end up spending a long time on the unemployment bench looking for a job."

A big danger sign is if you find yourself in a shrinking industry with a specialised set of skills. For some, it will be too late.

"People who haven't planned will suddenly find that the doors are all shut on them and they are usually aged 40 plus. Quite often they wouldn't be in the position they've got into if they had planned a little better."

With today's fast-paced business world it may be quite difficult to plan career moves as far as three years out but Dallimore says it is crucial to take stock of yourself on a regular basis.

"It's all about thinking ahead and not heading down an alleyway you can't get out of. It doesn't have to be a big thing, a couple of hours every year to take stock."

There are important questions to ask when taking stock of yourself, says Dallimore.

* Am I on the right track?

* Am I still learning?

* Am I doing all the things I should be doing in my current environment?

* Are there any opportunities left where I am?

* How do I benchmark in the market?

* How is my industry sector going?

To make sure that you're always growing, developing and learning, Dallimore says you can't leave it to chance.

"A lot of people just follow their nose," he says. "They just drift from one job to the next without really thinking about the next step, without thinking, 'If in 18 months I have to leave this job, what doors are open to me?"'

Dallimore says people often only take stock when a crisis is thrust upon them. They may fear redundancy, be fired, have a health scare or a family crisis. But this is not good enough, she says.

"You have to plan or you'll end up at age 55 with a diminishing income and still quite high financial outgoings."

But the more important reasons to plan a career path are not financial, she says. Money is not the ultimate driver for most people. Feeling fulfilled and challenged is what it's about.

"The biggest reason I think that people leave a role is because they're not being developed. People like to grow and develop. Even if they're the quickest cab off the rank, they can always learn a new skill."

Part of planning a career path is gaining all there is to gain from your current job. Just job hopping will raise suspicions, Dallimore says.

"If people are leaving a role because they're not being extended enough within the organisation, I would be ensuring they haven't missed opportunities that exist internally. If it's a good organisation and you're not being developed, you should be pushing back a little bit and asking for that development and coming up with suggestions on how you could be developed and being proactive about it."

Lee Brodie, career consultant and founding director of Career Dynamic, says that taking stock needs to result in a plan B.

"If we don't have a plan in place and there is a crisis, we often fall off the rails because it's not the best time to be proactively thinking through what you want to be doing with your life."

In developing plan B, Brodie also has four internal questions she says people should be asking themselves.

* Who am I?

* Where am I now?

* What do I want?

* Where do I want to be?

Then there is a set of external questions you should ask about what you're looking for.

* How would you like your new organisation to be?

* What's the culture?

* What sort of people do you want to be working with?

* What skills do you want to be using?

Brodie says people easily become complacent working inside organisations but that we need to be proactively managing our careers.

"They think that the organisation is looking after them when in fact the organisation has no intention of looking after them. A career lasting a lifetime is certainly an outdated concept. Our career is the most important thing to only one person - and that's us. Actually no one else really cares."

A career path is rarely a straight line says Brodie. Side journeys are fine so long as you know what you can come back to. But you should be clear about what your general long-term direction is. Don't change careers without first talking with someone in that career. And who knows what jobs lay in the future. Many of us are doing jobs now that did not even exist when we were asked what we wanted to be when we grow up.

"It's a bit like driving in a fog. You can only see a little way ahead. That's why you need contingency planning."

Brodie agrees that many of us are not planning properly.

"For many of us we don't actually stop and think. We just roll along reactively from one job to another until something happens. They sit there in siege mode hoping like hell that what's going on out there is not going to impact them."

Brodie says that the greatest wealth we have as workers is our ability to be in demand in the workplace. Staying up to date is key.

"It doesn't take much to be informed about what the trends are in the marketplace. There is a lot written on the web."

Brodie believes that most of us are not up to speed with everything that's available to us.

"Most of us only choose from a limited range of options that we happen to know about. We need to become more aware of what is out there."

Many of us just naturally do what we're good at but Brodie says that is not the attitude to have when looking to shape a long-term career path.

"Don't focus on what you're good at. Focus on what you're interested in. Interest will get you out of bed in the morning. Interest will drive you toward competency. But competency will not necessarily produce interest."

Gaining new competencies or qualifications will keep you ahead of the game. "Learning new skills is something you can't do in a hurry if you lose your job."