Contributed by regular guest blogger – Donal O’Nuallain from ThirdForce

All the recent talk about increasing the retirement age in the UK to 70 is frightening enough for most. If you take it that most people are in full time employment from their twenties then you are talking about careers spanning 50 years! Or half a century, if you want to give it the proper perspective. This got me thinking about how to plan our careers?

Would it be good to have a curriculum for careers? Something that mapped out our progression throughout our career path, highlighting areas that we need to develop our skills in order to move to different jobs or get that promotion that we deserve (need). Picture the scenario - from the age of 22 to 26 I will work for an accountancy firm in order to qualify as a chartered accountant. Once I’ve qualified I will return to college to study to become a journalist. Once I’ve completed my studies I will work for a newspaper covering anything and everything until I eventually get my big break and start writing about business and using my studies to benefit. After a few years I will eventually publish a book and become a successful author before using this as a platform to launch a successful television career, before finally being forced to retire due to too much success and fame.

Maybe the above example is a bit of a stretch but more and more people are changing careers and jobs and moving industry more frequently throughout their career. The days of a job for life are, by and large, long gone. Is it time to take an educational overview of our career plan? As in, what will I learn doing this and how will it help me progress my career? Eventually you would tick all the boxes that would provide you with the skill set that you need to get your promotion or even your dream job.

Learning and development programmes can help you get started and even form the basis of a career curriculum. Our MindLeaders PLuS service even takes your fellow employees opinions into account when deciding what you need to learn to improve yourself and do your current job better. It’s a good place to start and provides structure to your learning that you might not get elsewhere.

My colleagues and I recently undertook the initial survey. Designed to ascertain what both individuals and teams would benefit from learning the survey took about 20 minutes to complete and incorporated both personal and team oriented questions. We are now anxiously awaiting the results – what will I be told I need to learn, what do my colleagues think I need to learn, how will it improve my work? All of these questions will be answered and I look forward to sharing the answers with you here – you might even be able to help me plan my career curriculum!