The many advantages of career development include having clear strategies and dates set to achieve certain objectives. Keeping on track can be a strong pro, or advantage, as otherwise it can be easy to forget important steps to accomplish in order to gain momentum in one's career. Having a planned direction to work toward career-wise can also lead to a more balanced, organized life. Another one of the advantages of career development for many people is a greater sense of self-esteem gained by achieving set goals. Picking a career and development path can also create increased self-awareness in strengths, weaknesses, abilities and interests.
Career development classes that include exploring careers and individual aptitudes for them can boost self-awareness, as participants typically learn about their innate abilities. Understanding one's abilities and skills for different vocational areas can be one of the advantages of career development programs or classes from a personal standpoint. Many of these courses also include personality tests as well as information about what kinds of personalities are generally best suited to which types of careers. Exploring different career options with such self-knowledge can help people feel more positive about following job passions that they may have once disregarded or never even considered.
Understanding one's weaknesses as well as strengths is advantageous, as it creates a realistic awareness in career development. For instance, if a person wants to embark on a career in engineering but is weak at math, recognizing that may allow him or her to avoid wasting time and money later by taking advanced mathematics or statistics classes only to fail. Being aware of the problem though can lead to the student taking action to correct it, such as getting math tutoring. Even if that action doesn't solve the problem, one of the strongest advantages of career development is that oftentimes students have several choices of job goals in mind rather than only one.
Being in an entry-level job and working under a manager who gives helpful feedback can be advantageous. If the manager and employee sit down together to plan a course of career development, the employee can have a clear idea of what is expected of him or her in order to move up the ladder in the company. Such on-the-job planning can be one of the best advantages of career development while being an employee in a company with which one hopes to grow.
