The IT Career Builder’s Toolkit

Chapter 2. Career Building Defined

What is a Career, and How Do You Build One?

The planning and execution of an ongoing career development strategy is something that most professionals largely ignore. Although everyone would agree that planning is a critical element in reaching an objective, for many, career development appears random and haphazard.

This chapter explains why career building is a critical exercise. In addition, it attempts to strip away your fear of making an “incorrect” career choice by helping you develop an understanding of a long-term career perspective versus a job-to-job analysis of success and failure.

There are misconceptions about what constitutes a career. For many, a career is simply a string of successive jobs—typically ...