Professional Development Planning

Introduction

You may know, either from previous lessons or from your own research, that one of the best ways a recent graduate can improve their job search success is to take the time to differentiate. Learning additional skills allows you to be a good candidate for roles you might not be otherwise. It also will set you apart from other applicants who may be applying for the same job. Your final weeks in the classroom will be dedicated to putting that into practice.

Because this class is intended to give you freedom to explore, somewhat like a thesis project, there is no dedicated technical curriculum. It’s very important not to go in blind, however, so before you begin the Capstone class, we’re going to take some time to walk through the process organizing what your next few weeks will look like.

We’re going to do this by teaching you how to make a professional development plan. In this context, it’s going to guide your classroom learning, but this is also a valuable skill for longer term career success. The tech industry moves quickly, and investing time in your own continued education will allow you to progress professionally in a way that might be more difficult otherwise.

Preparing to Create Your Plan

Step One - Self-assessment

Early in the program, you completed a lesson on identifying your skills, strengths, and weaknesses. This is a great time to revisit that. You can use the existing assignment as a great jumping off point to reflect on all the work you’ve done to build both technical and non-technical skills throughout the program. It isn’t necessary to do an entirely new SWOT analysis, but it’s a good idea to note down what areas still feel like good opportunities for growth.

Step Two - Identify Skills Relevant to Your Career

There are a few different ways to do this, leaning on data, personal preference, or a combination of the two. This step is for brainstorming, so don’t worry yet about narrowing down your topics or about what you can fit into the Capstone course. Some places you could source subjects for your list are:

• Tools and technologies you don’t currently know, but are interested in learning.
• Search developer job postings for skills employers are asking for that you haven’t learned yet.
• Pick a specialization you’re interested in, like dev ops, information security, or game development and research what skills those roles require.
• Look for what’s popular. You might find that the tech industry looks very different from one city’s tech sector to the next.

Whatever method you use, make a list of any skills or tools that might be relevant to your personal development and make you a more competitive candidate.

Step Three - Narrow It Down

This step actually happens in two parts. The first is going to be picking what criteria you’re using to narrow it down. It’s going to be easier to stick to a plan that you have established rationale for than it is to make decisions about a sizable project like this off the cuff. They may not be exactly the same every time. We’ll list the major criteria people tend to use for this step and give some examples of how you might use those in a given situation.

This list is not exhaustive, but we’ll talk about some of the most common criteria and how you might use them in this process.

Professional goals: This is the one item on this list that should always be a priority. Think of this as the equivalent of the “Where do you see yourself in five years?” question that often comes up in interviews. Your professional development plan is going to help you get from point A to point B. What is point B for you? Figure out that point B, and take note of what is stopping you from getting there, because that will be important.

Purpose: This sounds similar to your professional goal, and may even overlap, but they’re not the same thing. To be clear, this isn’t your purpose in a broader sense, but specifically the purpose of the professional development plan you’re making. For instance, let’s say you really want to get hired by a particular company that is very competitive. That would be your professional goal. Now, let’s say when you were reflecting on that goal, you identified a skill they prioritize that you don’t have. The purpose of the professional development plan isn’t to get hired at this company. It’s to build the skill you’re missing (so you can work towards getting hired at this company).

Industry research: This is a pretty expansive factor that can mean different things in different contexts. For someone getting ready to start their job search, industry research might be combing job posts for skills that are commonly requested. For someone trying to make a move into a different part of the tech industry, it might be taking the time to learn what skills the role you want requires, so you can match it against your own skill set.

Skill gaps: This is less of a factor on its own and more something that works in tandem with the other items being discussed. Compare your existing skills with the ones that would be most useful to get where you’re going. You might see a tool that comes up again and again in job postings, for instance, that you don’t know how to use. Alternatively, maybe you’ve gotten feedback from interviews or networking connections that a skill you already have is less developed than is ideal. You could prioritize deepening your grasp on that existing skill instead.

Personal interest: This one is pretty easy to overlook, but it is absolutely okay to pick something to learn just because you want to! In cases like this, the way that it’s professionally useful may not be about the skill itself, but about showing employers that you’re proactive about continuing to learn and grow. It’s also very possible that the thing you’re interested in will be more directly valuable than it seems. As an example, let’s say you really want to learn Elixir. You’re not going to find it at the top of any lists of in demand developer skills, so you probably wouldn’t capture it as a choice using industry research or skill gaps. But there are companies that actively use Elixir, so even though you chose it because you wanted to, that doesn’t stop it from opening doors that might not be available otherwise.

Time: You’re going to want to create a plan that is achievable, so factoring in what time is available is pretty important. For instance, the plan you’re building for your capstone class is meant to be accomplished over a number of weeks with many, many hours dedicated to it. This gives a lot or room to explore something ambitious if you want to. If you’re building a plan to prioritize cramming over the weekend for an interview Monday, that’s going to look very different.

Which criteria you use in any given situation is going to vary, but try to give yourself a well rounded picture of what you hope to accomplish so you can make informed decisions about the plan itself.

Step Four - Put Everything Together

Before you start actually drafting, you’ll want to make sure you have all the information you need to do so effectively. SMART goals are one way to accomplish, but any method that ensures all the components are there will be fine! The main things you’re going to need are:

• A goal with a measurable outcome: This might be different from one plan to the next, but the principle is always the same. What do you want to be able to do by the end of the time period you’re planning for? How do you know you have succeeded? If you decide to spend your capstone class learning Java, your goal might be to be comfortable enough with the language to work independently in it in a job setting. Measuring your success could be something like building an application with it. No matter how you do it, you’ll want something to be able to see for yourself that this was time well spent!
• Specific milestones: What steps do you need to take to reach your goal? As an example, let’s look at the C#/.NET class you just completed. You went through curriculum and completed code reviews dedicated to things like test-driven development and many-to-many relationships. The tools, technologies, and other skills you decide to focus your energy on should be similarly broken down.
• Resources: Where are you planning to source information from to learn the skill you’re trying to build. You don’t have to know all the details, and this doesn’t mean you can’t branch out later, but you should have a jumping off point that is similar to the way you’ve used the Epicodus curriculum so far. For your long-term career success, reliably being able to find resources to teach yourself new skills are going to be just as important as learning those new skills.
• A schedule: Think of this like your syllabus. In fact, the template provided in the next section is directly modeled off the syllabus. What do you need to accomplish every week or every day to finish successfully?

Drafting Your Plan

Now that you have all the pieces, you’ll need to build a framework for them. We’re going to create a sample plan to demonstrate the process, which you’ll be able to use as a jumping off point for your own learning. You can make a copy of this example plan, which is modeled off of the syllabus you’ve already been using, to get started if you don’t want to build one from the ground up.

In the top section of our example learning plan, we’ve added a space where you’ll put in your goal, milestones, and resources.

Next, you’ll want to add in a weekly schedule. This will make it easier for you to keep track of your progress so you can troubleshoot if you’re running behind schedule, or do some further exploration if you happen to be ahead! In the template, we’ve left all career services items that are scheduled in at a specific time so that they’ll be easier to plan around. While learning in the Capstone class can be independent, we would strongly recommend continuing to collaborate with other students who are learning the same subject matter where possible. While your teacher may or may not know the language you’ve decided to learn, they will also be a valuable resource for getting feedback and support along the way.

In our example plan, we’ve decided to use the Coursera Object Oriented Programming in Java course. This happens to be broken down into six modules, so we’ve used the first module to demonstrate what schedule planning might look like in week one.

In the first section, you’ll want to note what you expect to have done by the end of the week. Then, for each day, map out what steps you need to take to complete everything on your list on time. Build this out for the total duration of your plan, which in this particular case, will be the nine weeks of the Capstone course.

Using Your Plan

Once you have a plan that feels manageable and leaves you with the outcome you’re after at the end, it’s time to put it to use!

To start with, try following your plan as closely as possible. You may find you’ve over- or underestimated how much time it’s going to take to get through individual components, and that’s okay! Make note of any major time discrepancies. At the end of the week, use that information to adjust the following weeks. With some practice, you’ll get to a place where you have a pretty consistently comfortable cadence.

For the Capstone course, it’s a good idea to leave at least a week or two at the end where you’re not trying to learn new material. Dedicate this time to polishing your Capstone project and other portfolio pieces, meeting with your teacher and advisor, and applying for jobs.