A career is the work a person does. Another definition of a career is the sequence of jobs that an individual has held throughout his or her working life. “Career Planning” therefore embraces a person’s entire life—the spiritual, social, educational and vocational. Career Planning is the life- long process a person goes through to learn about himself (his purpose, personality, interests, skills and talents) develop a self- concept, learn about careers, and work situations and then make a career choice based on information gathered while developing coping and social skills. It also includes the skills a person employs in finding and keeping the job that is right for him or her. 

A career is the sequence of jobs that an individual has held throughout his or her working life. For example, during the course of a career, a person may have held several jobs in the occupation of nursing. One job may have been that of a surgical nurse. Each surgical nurse in a hospital holds a particular position that consists of several related duties. These duties might include preparing the operating room for surgery and monitoring the patient’s vital signs during surgery. The duty of preparing the operating room for surgery could include several tasks, such as sterilizing surgical instruments, checking monitoring instruments to ensure that they are working properly, and obtaining supplies of blood.

The major focus of Career Planning should be on matching personal goals and opportunities that are realistically available. A term worth defining is “Career Path”. A Career path is a flexible line of movement through which an employee may move during employment with an organization.
One can think of career planning as building bridges from one’s current job/career to next job/career. Without the bridge, one may easily stumble or lose direction, but with the bridge there is safety and direction.

Succession Planning refers to the process of developing the second line for taking up a higher role in the organization. This enables organizations to rely on internal recruitments for various organizational roles. This also ensures that the organization does not face a major disruption when any of its executives move out of their existing roles due to various reasons. A good succession planning system ensures smooth transition of a new incumbent into the role when the previous role holder moves out of the particular role in an organization.

Matching Succession Planning, Individual Career Plans and Organizational Career Management

Individual career plans must be matched with organizational career management systems in order to address issues ranging from retention to employee satisfaction and performance management. The succession planning system must be integrated with the organizational career management system to ensure that second line employees can move into higher roles. This would contribute to satisfying their career aspirations while fulfilling organizational talent requirements.