What is a professional development plan? How to create one and boost your career

• Encourages career growth by identifying areas of improvement and providing clear steps to get there.  

• Develops a focused strategy meaning you're more likely to succeed because you’ve thought through your goals and the ways to make it happen. 

• Gives you a clear plan with resources and timeline means you’re more likely to stick to it. 

• Demonstrates commitment to your current and future employers to improve your skills. 

Professional development plans (PDP) should be tailored to reflect your professional needs and the sector you work in. Having said that, your professional development plan should contain at least these elements:

• Career goals: what you want to achieve to boost your career and professional standing.

• Skills assessment: looking at your skills, strengths, areas that require developing.

• Learning objectives: what skills and/or qualifications do you need to gain to help you towards your career goals?

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• Actions: what you need to do – step-by-step – to achieve it.

• Timelines: putting timelines to your actions / goals.

• Review points: reviewing your progress and outcomes.

Think about where you want to be in your career and give it a specific time frame. Career goals vary so you should set career goals that work for you.

Here are some examples:

Profession switcher: e.g., become a clinical psychologist over the next 3-5 years.

Ambitious career climber: e.g., get promoted from team leader to junior manager within 12 months.

Skills focused: e.g., learn data analytics within next 18 months.

Personal professional: e.g., settle into new job within next 4 months.

Aligned with business objectives: e.g., Increase organic traffic to website blogs by 15%.

The examples above are just a few. What’s important is choosing goals aligned to your professional ambitions and compliment your workplace values.

With ‘big career goals’ you could also break them down into smaller, short-term goals. Changing your career is an obvious example as retraining, getting new qualifications, trying to get your first break into a new industry, all require smaller short-term goals to get you there.

This step is about looking at professional capabilities and matching them against your career goals to identify areas to work on.

Focus on these aspects:

• technical skills
• strengths
• weaknesses
• your current job responsibilities
• work-related experience
• transferable skills
• relevant qualifications
• interpersonal skills

You should also consider your current circumstances, e.g.:

• Are you currently employed?
• Do you need time to upskill / retrain / get accredited qualification?
• Do you have a way to fund a new course?
• Have you got other commitments such as caring for a young family or elderly parents?

It’s important to take your time with this and be honest when you assess yourself as it gives you a baseline to work with when it comes to putting together a strategy.

Put together a strategy that gets you to your desired career goal and considers what you answered during the self-assessment stage.

Taking the profession switcher as an example:

Career goal: change career to become a clinical psychologist.

Self-assessment: they are working and raising a family and they cannot afford to give up their job to study. After some research they found out the route to becoming a clinical psychologist has many steps but one of the first is to gain a relevant undergraduate degree or postgraduate conversion degree that is BPS accredited.

Strategy: complete a BPS accredited psychology degree (the learning outcome) via distance learning that will give the flexibility to study whilst working, as a first step.

From the strategy, you can devise an action plan. In this example it could be:

• Research universities
• Attend virtual information evenings
• Research funding options
• Apply and enrol
• Set up study plan alongside work and family commitments

Having identified your career goal, conducted a self-assessment, and developed a strategy, you’re now a place where you can look at how to resource that strategy.

Things to consider and ask yourself (depending on your career goal):

• Which course or qualification?
• Which training provider or university?
• If studying, map out time schedule needed.
• Secure funding – self-fund, get employer sponsorship or look at student loan options.
• Are there any networks that you can join?
• Would it be helpful to have a mentor?
• Do you need to invest in any digital tools or books?

Needless to say, the resources you need should match your strategy and goals.