The Seven Stages of One's Career - Brief Article

Training & Development, Dec, 2000 by David D. Dubois

Career work, a term coined by Dubois, is the process of determining what one's path through life will be, how that journey will be made, and how to manage the demands of one's life and work along the way. At each stage of career work, cultural, work, personal, and interpersonal value systems influence us.

There are seven stages.

Stage 1: Exploration includes a person's earliest dreams of "what I want to be when I grow up" as well as the revisions since then.

Stage 2: Personal assessment asks people to assess and understand their abilities, traits, interests, learning and work styles, work-environment preferences, and values.

Stage 3: Analysis involves analyzing information and options from the personal assessment stage.

Stage 4: Decision making prompts people to review career work goals and then to submit them to a decision-making process.

Stage 5: Planning turns each goal into a career work project by writing a plan similar to a detailed project management plan.

Stage 6: Implementation or development is often referred to as "working your plan." The order of work depends on the complexity of each goal and the relationships among the goals.

Stage 7: Life-work management is the stage in which people attempt to balance all of life's elements while they pursue remaining goals or cope with unanticipated challenges.

In order for people to do their career work effectively, they must possess and appropriately use a variety of competencies, personal characteristics that underlie successful performance. Dubois lists and defines 20 competencies.

The author also spells out ways in which leaders in organizations can better understand their employees' career work and take steps to help the process--for the benefit of the organization, its leaders, and employees.