Career Management. How to Conquer the Summit of Business Olympus.

Many people dream of a successful career. That's just one desire to make a career is not enough. To become successful in any field of activity, one must strive for constant professional growth. It is for this reason that, at the very beginning of a long and difficult path of advancement, great attention should be given to such an important matter as career planning.

First you need to clearly decide on what kind of work you, as a beginning careerist, can get in the best possible way. Here, of course, an important role belongs to education, the available work experience and, of course, personal interests and preferences. A help in the definition is called for specialist consultations and tests for suitability for a particular profession - such tests can be easily found in print publications devoted to career problems, or on relevant Internet resources.

One of the conditions for a successful career development is that you must know perfectly well what you ultimately want to achieve, based on this, and career planning is carried out. It is absolutely necessary to imagine all the stages of a career, to set ourselves absolutely specific goals and tirelessly strive to achieve them. At the same time, one should not think that it is possible to fulfill absolutely everything planned - all stages and goals can be corrected, but it is necessary to strive to achieve the set goals.

It is believed that there are several types of careers. In general, a somewhat simplified approach to this interesting question has been adopted, although few people think that a career is simply a victorious ascent of an employee on the administrative ladder. There are many different interpretations, but basically there are two main types: vertical career and horizontal career.

Career management largely depends on the type chosen. So, a horizontal career involves not moving up the career ladder, but some horizontal movement, that is, moving to other positions that are close or identical in status, within the same company, but perhaps in different departments or projects.

This statement can be explained by an example: the sales manager goes to the same position in the advertising department or the head of the department for public relations becomes the head of the personnel department. If to say more shortly, at a horizontal type of career the expert remains the expert, the manager - the manager, and the head - the head. But in any case, all such migrations imply the improvement of the employee, the growth of his level of professional knowledge and skills. In this case, career management also involves setting clear goals and objectives.

A vertical career, unlike a horizontal one, means that a company employee can occupy a higher position in his company subdivision or a friend, while increasing his professional and competence level. As an option - the transition to work in another company to a higher position.

Vertical career has an end point, as a rule, it is the post of general director or president of the company. As it is possible to assume, there are no restrictions on the horizontal career. Nevertheless, it is necessary to clearly realize that in reality there is no type of career in its pure form. For example, it may well be that before taking up the post of department head, the employee will try his hand at several positions of the same level that only exist in this department.

As a vivid illustration of this statement, one can name an example of the world famous archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann, who began his independent life as a runaway boy. Once in Schroeder's trading firm, Schliemann perfectly studied all varieties of the main indigo product, knew all the company's warehouses-in short, he was able to become an indispensable and very competent employee.

Constantly improving horizontally and bringing huge profits to the company, Schliemann moved along the career ladder, eventually becoming a full-fledged partner of Schroeder.

In any serious company, such an important matter as the management of the career of workers is paid the closest attention, since this is how you can select personnel for vacancies. Employees with competence and career development are helping to plan their career correctly and to correctly define all stages of their career.

Despite the fact that a career can not always be manageable, because often in the success or failure of a career a certain role can be played simply by chance. Yet in the development and improvement of employees of any firm, the management of a career is of the greatest importance.