Be the CEO of your career and drive it further
Nowadays we talk a lot about career management, but what really is career management, and do we need to plan our career? In the modern world we need to constantly adapt to the constantly changing environment and emerging challenges this brings. What helps us to keep up with the trends is constant skills development and evolution.
Career, do I need one?
It is good to look at our professional life as a journey. We usually plan our holidays quite thoroughly – when and where we will travel, how long we will stay in the desired place etc. This is also the approach we should use to plan our career journey, especially as it lasts much longer than a holiday and most of us would rather like to have control over our career. The most frequent question I hear is “where should I start managing my career?”. The answer is now, but the key is how to start. There are multiple approaches. I am a fan of simplicity and so my recommendations are:
The desired role can inspire you to do more for your development, to develop deep knowledge of technology or the industry, to grow your network, to gain visibility and to build on your personal brand.
- You can start from the dream role. It doesn’t need to be a role with a specific job title, but imagine what you would be doing, how you would be interacting, research the skills you would need, seek feedback, reflect on your experience and analyse your current knowledge/skillset to understand the skill gap. Understanding your skill and experience gap enables you to have a real plan, what you need to learn to be able to fulfil your dream role.
OR
- You start by analysing your current skills, knowledge and experience. You can see what roles align with these, which roles meet your interest. Talk to colleagues and friends about their careers, then you can approach your learning journey to focus on what is needed for the roles and to fill in the skills gap.
While designing our career plan, we need to remember that to apply for the next position we need approximately 70% of the required skills. The remaining 30% should fall into the development plan while performing the role. We also need to remember that we can not only upskill (enhancing the portfolio of our existing skills), but we can also reskill, which means to completely change the career destination. This happened to me personally, changing from project management to human resources, taking transferrable skills from Project Management to support me in my new career whilst developing new skills in the HR field.
Why is career management important in life?
Human beings like to know the purpose of their actions and, for many, a meaningful career can fulfil this need. The desired role can inspire you to do more for your development, to develop deep knowledge of technology or the industry, to grow your network, to gain visibility and to build on your personal brand.
If you are “the CEO of your career”, you take personal ownership of your career, you drive it yourself, and while it is something you create, you can change it any time and adjust it to your own and the market needs. There are multiple benefits of planning your career– you build self-awareness, you take yourself out of your comfort zone, you develop new skills, and you gain the knowledge of opportunities available in the organization.
As Michelle Obama said “Just try new things. Don't be afraid, step out of your comfort zone and soar".
How do we take care of Career Management at Atos?
The core value of Career Management at Atos is to deliver a sustainable portfolio in which employees can develop, implement, and monitor career goals and next steps strategy. We adopt a holistic approach to career management, supporting employees with self-development, career planning, understanding the organization, training and development. Our mission is to broaden the internal applicant pool and inspire talent to pursue a career within Atos. We developed a rich portfolio of internal offerings, which should help every employee to plan and to drive their career.
The offerings focus on two main aspects: career progression and development. From a career progression perspective, it is worth mentioning the Global Hands Up program for internal opportunities fulfilment supported by the digital application Evolve, virtual Job Fairs, and weekly published Hot Jobs (important open positions). Development areas are covered by Atos Corporate University hub and My Future At Atos space, Career Advisory sessions, career webinars on development topics and other ad hoc initiatives.
Atos employees can benefit from the expertise of the dedicated Global Career Management Team, benefit from career conversations and career coaching. The offerings and the team’s expertise, combined with the knowledge, skills and experience of the employee, can be a lever to the next steps, using the opportunities they have inside the organization.
By Sylvia Dziwura, Group Head of Career Management
Posted on: January 23, 2023
Topics
- Essentials
- CSR
- Employee engagement