Essay on Career Development and Professional Skills: CPD1102

This essay provides a reflective analysis of career and professional development. It defines the student's career mission statement and explores the essential skills needed for success in their chosen profession, specifically teaching. The essay emphasizes the importance of professional development through seminars, workshops, and continuous learning to stay competitive. It highlights both hard and soft skills, including communication, enthusiasm, confidence, and dedication. The author reflects on their own skills and identifies areas for improvement, such as dedication, to excel as a teacher. The essay references relevant literature to support the arguments and underscores the dynamic nature of career development, emphasizing the need for ongoing skill enhancement to achieve professional goals and make a positive difference in their career.

Running head: ESSAY ON CAREER DEVELOPMENT
Essay on Career Development
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1ESSAY ON CAREER DEVELOPMENT
Professional development is a term that is used to describe the efforts that are made to
maintain and to earn various types of professional credentials. Examples in this respect include
the efforts that are made to acquire academic degrees and diplomas, undertaking formal
coursework, partaking in informal learning opportunities that are situated in practice and
attending seminars and conferences (Basto-Pereira and Farrington 2019). Professional
development is something that is collaborative and intensive in nature and it ideally is seen to
incorporate an evaluative stage (Benson et al. 2018). In this assignment I will engage in a
reflective analysis of what career development and professional development mean to me and the
type of career or profession that is ideally suited for my skills and abilities. I will define with
clarity my career mission statement and will also reflect particularly on the type of skills that I
need to attain in order to be a success in my chosen profession or career (Sharf 2016).
Professional development is important I believe, as it involves undertaking the type of
programs and courses that help us to attain the skills and the credentials which we need to
perform well on the job front. There are many ways by which professional development can be
brought about. To begin with, attending a seminar or a workshop is one of the key ways by
which professional development can be attained (Neureiter, M., and Traut-Mattausch, E. 2016).
By attending a workshop or a seminar, an individual is exposed to a variety of new and updated
ideas and ways of thinking, deploying which can prove to be useful in the domain of job and
career. Most careers these days are those that require employees to be pragmatic and innovative
in their train of thought. Employees who are capable of innovative thinking, who have the
capacity to think out of the box are people who are most likely to do well in their professions.
Hence I believe that professional development is something that is very important for the career
growth of a person. Unless methods or measures are undertaken to enhance skills and abilities,

2ESSAY ON CAREER DEVELOPMENT
there is every possibility that an individual will lose out to rivals and competitors in the
workplace. I feel that in order to stay ahead of competitors and to attain professional excellence,
additional or extra training should be taken so that an individual has all the competence that is
necessary to perform or carry out a specific job role in the desired manner. I personally feel that
professional development is something that we should undertake from time to time, by signing
up for courses and programs that can sufficiently enhance the skills and abilities that we must
demonstrate in a given job. With respect to my own career and professional life, I can state that I
am more than willing to sign up for the type of programs or courses that are necessary in order
for my skills and abilities to be enhanced in a suitable fashion. I am open to new forms of
learning and I feel that career or job growth can become quite static unless professional
development is undertaken. I would also like to point out in this context that some of the
activities that can be undertaken to enhance professional development and which I would want to
take up in order to develop my skills at least are research, foreign language learning,
participating in professional programs and undertaking a skills based approach to learning.
Both hard and soft skills need to be developed for career success, and in order for
professionals to be better positioned to address the challenges of everyday living. The
unprecedented use of technology has transformed the way people conduct their professions today
(Blustein 2017). Professionals need to be proficient about how they handle or make use of
technology to perform business operations and to attain the goals and objectives of a business
organization. It is also quite crucial for professionals to be well-spoken, to be communicative
about their thoughts and ideas at the workplace and to maintain a good relationship with the
people that they are working under, all of which requires the proper and effective use of soft
skills (Bocciardi et al. 2017). Being polite in speech, being refined in speech and being in a

3ESSAY ON CAREER DEVELOPMENT
position to convey thoughts and ideas about work in an appropriate manner can help an
individual to progress quite a bit on the career front, which is why such skills should be
inculcated in the first place (Vondracek et al. 2019). Skills are necessary for career enhancement
because they provide a professional with the practical experience that they need in order to be a
success at the jobs that they do. Professionals these days cannot be well versed only in bookish
knowledge in order to carry out their job roles in a successful manner. Rather they need to have
all the practical skills which are essential to perform challenging jobs with the success that is
desired. Career development is something that puts a professional in the position to attain all the
skills that are needed to perform a job role in an innovative manner, with the individual
concerned being possessed with all the skills and the knowledge that is necessary to address
challenges and difficulties in the workplace. By being a skilled employee, an individual will have
all the acumen, the knowledge and also the practical abilities that need to be brought into play to
be considered a success at the place of work (Zacher et al. 2019).
If I graduate with success, then the profession that I would like to take up is that of a
teacher. A teacher is a person who must be communicative as the primary function that is
performed by a teacher is the imparting of knowledge. It is the duty of a teacher to disseminate
knowledge and ideas to students on a subject matter, which in turn they are expected to absorb or
to retain later on in order for the learning process to be considered a success. Hence a teacher has
to have or at least display good communication skills in order to be able to get his or her
messages across to the students and in order for the knowledge to be imparted in the desired
manner (Zacher et al. 2019). If the teacher lacks good communication skills, the students will fail
to understand him or her, and the learning process that is undertaken will turn out to be in vain.
Enthusiasm and confidence are two other skills that I believe a teacher must have in order to be

4ESSAY ON CAREER DEVELOPMENT
considered effective in a classroom setup. If a teacher is not positive and confident about what he
or she is teaching, then such a person will not be taken seriously by the students and the entire
learning process will be futile in nature (Vondracek et al. 2019). It is expected that a teacher be
confident about the manner by which a subject is being taught and also be enthusiastic about the
same so that the passion of the teacher regarding the subject that is being taught comes across to
the students and so that students in turn are able to imbibe the same passion and the same interest
for learning. When the students see that their teacher is confident and happy, they are also going
to feel positive about what they are being taught (Sharf 2016).
Additionally, an important skill that I need to develop in order to be a successful teacher
someday is the skill of dedication. Teachers really need to be dedicated in the classroom if they
are to impart their lessons successfully. Children will feel the motivation and the devotion that is
necessary to learn a difficult or even an easy subject for that matter, if they see that their teacher
is a person who is dedicated to the learning process as a whole. When teachers are not dedicated,
there is no incentive that the students receive to partake in the learning process. They are going
to feel dejected and detached from the learning process altogether and will not want to put their
best foot forward when it comes to their studies. While I personally am quite dedicated to the
work that I do in my everyday life, I believe I need to pay more attention to the development of
this particular skill in order for this element of dedication to come across more in the
professional duties that I take up. The other skills of confidence, enthusiasm and communication
are skills that I already possess and which I believe are going to stand me in good stead in the
professional journey that I pursue of being a teacher (Sharf 2016).
Thus, career development is quite dynamic and varied in its nature and form, and in this
reflective essay, I have made an attempt to highlight the significance of professional

5ESSAY ON CAREER DEVELOPMENT
development and skills development in particular, pointing out why skills need to be attained and
enhanced in order to be a success in one’s profession. I am personally quite serious about taking
up teaching as a profession and while I do have the skills that are needed to do a good job of
being a teacher, the angle of dedication is one that I could definitely work on or develop in order
to be able to come across as a truly dedicated teacher someday.

6ESSAY ON CAREER DEVELOPMENT
References
Basto-Pereira, M., and Farrington, D. P. 2019. Lifelong Conviction Pathways and Self-Reported
Offending: Towards a Deeper Comprehension of Criminal Career Development. The British
Journal of Criminology.
Benson, J., Brown, M., Glennie, M., O'Donnell, M., and O'Keefe, P. 2018. The generational
“exchange” rate: How generations convert career development satisfaction into organisational
commitment or neglect of work. Human Resource Management Journal, 28(4), 524-539.
Blustein, D. L. 2017. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WORKING: A New Perspective for Career
Development. Career Planning & Adult Development Journal, 33(2)
Bocciardi, F., Caputo, A., Fregonese, C., Langher, V., and Sartori, R. 2017. Career adaptability
as a strategic competence for career development. European Journal of Training and
Development
Neureiter, M., and Traut-Mattausch, E. 2016. An inner barrier to career development:
Preconditions of the impostor phenomenon and consequences for career development. Frontiers
in psychology, 7, 48.
Sharf, R. S. 2016. Applying career development theory to counseling. Nelson Education.
Vondracek, F.W., Lerner, R.M. and Schulenberg, J.E., 2019. Career development: A life-span
developmental approach. Routledge
Zacher, H., Rudolph, C. W., Todorovic, T., and Ammann, D. 2019. Academic career
development: A review and research agenda. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 110, 357-373.