Career growth rarely follows a straight line. Traditional career paths have been blurred, and it’s now common — even necessary — for professionals to pick up new skills, switch employers and change industries entirely — all while managing hectic deadlines, evolving organizational priorities and emerging technologies like artificial intelligence.
What Is a Professional Development Plan?
A professional development plan identifies an individual’s career goals and the steps needed to achieve them. It’s useful for guiding skill development, career advancement and other professional goals.
Professionals can navigate this dynamic labor market with more intention by creating a professional development plan, a career roadmap of sorts that identifies specific goals and the actions needed to achieve those goals. A professional development plan can transform a vague, nebulous idea into a specific, tangible agenda with a clear set of instructions.
In this article, we’ll teach you how to create a professional development plan, including examples of goals, plans and generative AI prompts you can use to create your own personalized gameplan for career development.
What Is a Professional Development Plan?
A professional development plan is a roadmap to achieving your career goals — whether that’s getting promoted within your current organization or changing careers entirely. It’s a blueprint for strategically growing your career, learning new technologies and adapting to market dynamics.
When creating a professional development plan, take stock of your current skills and interests, then compare them against the skills, knowledge and experience you’ll need to achieve your goal. Once you’ve identified the resources you plan to use to upskill, develop a detailed agenda with specific steps you can take to achieve your professional goals.
Individuals are ultimately responsible for charting their own career path, but it’s also helpful to have a manager’s guidance or feedback when creating a professional development plan.
The term “professional development plan” and “employee development plan” are sometimes used interchangeably. While there are no clear-cut definitions for these terms, an employee development plan is typically drafted by a manager to guide an employee’s growth within the organization. A professional development plan, meanwhile, typically refers to a plan for growing one’s own career, irrespective of their future with their current employer.
How to Create a Professional Development Plan
Follow these six steps to create a professional development plan that transforms your career goals into a focused, actionable roadmap.
1. Assess Where You Are Right Now
Before you chart your course for the future, you have to understand your current capabilities and motivations. Take an inventory of your skills and knowledge, as well as your interests, values and personality type. For a comprehensive assessment, take an online personality test or ask a manager or coworker to offer their perspective. This information will be important for designing a plan that plays to your strengths while identifying areas for improvement.
2. Set Career Goals
Reflecting on what you know about your skillset and interests, develop a long-term career goal you would like to achieve in the next year, five years or 10 years, depending how ambitious you’re feeling. To make this goal more attainable, identify several short-term goals you can achieve in the next several months. When possible, make these goals SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. This is just a rough draft, though, and you’ll have time to hone your SMART goals after you gather more information.
3. Conduct Research and Identify Resources
You have an idea of where you’re headed, but you still need to figure out how you’ll actually get there. Research the skills, experiences and qualifications you’ll need, and identify any online classes or webinars that will help you bridge those skill gaps. Arrange informational interviews from people who are working in that role, and ask them (or someone else in the field) to be your mentor. Share your career goals with your manager and ask if there are any stretch projects you can take on to gain new skills and experiences.
4. Outline Action Items and a Timeline
Now that you have a better idea of the skills and experiences required — and the resources to help you gain them — it’s time to refine the big-picture goals you set earlier. Outline in finer detail what strategies you will take to achieve your short-term goals. Identify all of the classes, stretch projects and training opportunities that align with your goals, and attach deadlines to each of these action items. By this point, your goals should be SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound). This will help you track your progress and hold yourself accountable to your goals.
5. Execute the Plan
Once you have a plan in place, start chipping away at your short-term goals. It may be tempting to put your professional development goals on the back burner when life gets hectic, but you can keep yourself on track by setting aside a specified time period each week for uninterrupted professional development time. Also, keep your eyes open for additional opportunities to acquire new skills, gain new experiences and make new connections.
6. Evaluate Progress
Track your progress regularly to ensure you are on pace to achieve your goals. If you are working with a mentor or your manager, regularly ask them for feedback or advice to aid your professional growth. If you are having trouble meeting your goals, you may need to make your short-term goals more manageable and set new deadlines. After all, you developed your professional development plan with the best information you had at the time, and you may need to revise it to adapt to new information and evolving circumstances.
Using Generative AI to Make a Professional Development Plan
Crafting a professional development plan requires introspection, research and strategic planning. This can be difficult work, so you may find it helpful to ask a generative AI tool like ChatGPT to kick off the brainstorming session. These are a few prompt ideas you can use in each stage of the process:
- Self-assessment: Analyze my LinkedIn profile and suggest three to five core strengths, plus two areas I could improve to [goal].
- Setting goals: Propose three short-term goals for a [current role] who wants to become a [target role].
- Researching goals: I'm a [current role], and my goal is to become a [target role] within [timeframe]. What skills, qualifications, and types of experience do I need to be competitive for this role, and how do people typically make that transition?
- Identify resources: List online courses, books, podcasts and other resources that would be helpful to a [current role] who wants to become a [target role].
- Writing a professional development plan: I’m a [current role]. Help me create a professional development plan to become a [target role] within [timeframe]. Include short-term goals, learning activities and how I can gain experience while working in my current role.
Examples of Professional Development Goals
Goal #1: Become a senior software engineer in a year.
Short-term goal #1: Complete an advanced system design course in three months.
Short-term goal #2: Lead a cross-functional engineering project and deliver a new feature within six months.
Short-term goal #3: Mentor a junior software engineer for nine months.
Goal #2: Within one year, learn how to use Tableau to support data-driven decision-making.
Short-term goal #1: Complete the Tableau Desktop Specialist certification in three months.
Short-term goal #2: Within six months, create a dashboard that tracks the team’s monthly key performance metrics.
Short-term goal #3: Within a year, propose a data-backed solution to improve team efficiency.
Professional Development Plan Examples
Example 1: Professional Development Plan for a Prospective Manager
Self-Assessment: I’m a strong individual contributor, but I lack leadership skills and experience. I have a desire to support the work of others and institute more efficient processes.
Long-Term Goal: Get promoted to manager in one year.
- Short-Term Goal: Lead a team project over the next nine months.
- Short-Term Goal: Complete a leadership development course in the next six months.
- Short-Term Goal: Complete a six-month mentorship with my manager.
Resources: “Leading People and Teams” course on Coursera; Mentorship with manager; HBR’s 10 Must Reads for New Managers; Coaching for Leaders podcast.
Action Steps:
- Enroll in the “Leading People and Teams” course on Coursera by February 1.
- Ask my manager to be my mentor by February 1.
- Propose a marketing campaign by February 29.
- Start the mentorship program by April 1.
- Launch the marketing campaign by April 1.
- Read HBR’s 10 Must Reads for New Managers by May 1.
- Complete “Leading People and Teams” course by July 31.
- Complete mentorship program by November 1.
- Complete the marketing campaign by October 31.
Example 2: Professional Development Plan for Becoming a Confident Public Speaker
Self-Assessment: I am comfortable speaking in small team settings, but I struggle to manage my nerves when speaking in larger groups. I want to grow my career, which means I will have to be able to give presentations in board meetings, companywide meetings and industry conferences.
Long-Term Goal: Become a confident public speaker in one year.
- Short-Term Goal: Complete a public speaking course within six months.
- Short-Term Goal: Give three presentations at Toastmasters within eight months.
- Short-Term Goal: Deliver a formal presentation to a large group in the workplace within 11 months.
Resources: Toastmasters International group; "Dynamic Public Speaking" class on Coursera; The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking by Dale Carnegie.
Action Steps:
- Enroll in the "Dynamic Public Speaking" course on Coursera by February 1.
- Find and attend a Toastmasters meeting by March 1.
- Complete "Dynamic Public Speaking" course by June 1.
- Read The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking by July 1.
- Give three presentations at Toastmasters by September 1.
- Develop a presentation to deliver to company executives by November 1.
- Present at the monthly executive meeting on December 1.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does a professional development plan consist of?
A professional development plan typically includes a self-assessment, long-term and short-term goals, resources that could be helpful and a detailed list of actions (and associated deadlines) that will help an individual achieve their professional goals.
What is an example of a professional development plan?
A marketing specialist aims to become a marketing manager in two years, but he lacks experience in leadership and strategy development. Guided by the action steps on his professional development plan, he completes a leadership course, shadows a marketing manager and eventually leads his own marketing campaign. He now has the skills and experience to be considered for a marketing manager role.
What goals should be included in a professional development plan?
A professional development plan should include a mix of short-term, mid-term and long-term goals. A professional development plan might help an individual learn a new skill, get promoted, improve their job performance or gain a new professional experience.
