Career Growth vs Career Development

Are you searching for a job that will give you the opportunity to grow and develop your career?

Do you value the opportunity for career growth or development to a 20% pay increase?

According to a research carried out by Gallup in 2016, it was revealed that 87% of millennials rate professional growth and development opportunities as important to them in any job. As important as career growth and development is to your career, do you know what they really mean?

How can you explain the difference between career growth and development? It is easy for you to think of career growth and career development as interchangeable terms, but do they actually mean the same thing? That is what we will help you find out in this article.

What is Career Growth?

Career growth can simply be seen as the evolution in the professional ladder within the organization. Career growth is the process of becoming more, and becoming more in your career is moving from one level to another in your career field. If you are growing your career it means you are moving into a more prestigious position within that job field. Career growth basically deals with the goals you set for yourself and where you see your career going.

Career growth usually come in form of promotion from one role to another which comes as a result of performance and experience. For example, if you come into an organization as a sales representative and grow within that ladder to become a Sales manager over a period of time, this is when you can say that your career has experienced a growth. Many people look forward to getting to the top of their career ladder, working on your career growth is the way you can get to the top.

What is Career Development?

Career development is basically the process of transformation that occurs within a particular role from one level to another. Career development simply refers to the process of improving yourself to become better at what you do. Developing your career is developing what you have performing a particular role or duty. Career development can be basically improving your skills to better perform your role.

Career development mostly comes as a result of self-improvement.  For example, if you were employed into a company as a content developer, and at the point you started, you were only creating text as content, then over a period of time you started creating other forms of content like videos etc. at that point you can say that you have developed your career.

Difference between Career Growth and Career Development

Although career growth and career development are two key factors that lead to career advancement. However, it is important to know the difference between the two, how they function and how to address them. Let’s take a look at the major difference between the two terms;

Career Growth

• Focus on moving to a higher position
• Focus on what the career goal is
• Focuses more on plan and tactics

Career Development

• Focus on improving skills within your role
• Focus on how you can achieve the goal
• Focuses on job transformation

Why Career Growth and Development?

Career growth and career development are the key factors that lead to career satisfaction, increased relevance, and career advancement. To achieve career success, there should be a symbiotic relationship between career growth and career development. It is important for you to learn how to strike a balance between the two rather than isolating them.

Since focusing on your career growth and career development can lead to career advancement, it is, however, very necessary to find a way to balance the two, even if they can stand alone. Let’s look at this example, imagine you have only focused on your career growth as a sales, and you have grown to become a sales manager over time, but did not take the time to improve your skills and ability (in relation to trends) as a salesperson. What do you think it will feel being a manager without the necessary skills? It will feel like an empty barrel. Developing your career by grooming the right skill and growing your career by setting organizational goals will ultimately lead to a better career and a better you.

Tips to Advance your Career through Career Growth and Development?

Knowing what career growth and development is all about and the major difference between the two terms, it will now be much easier to see how you can apply these two factors to move your career to the next level. Since some companies have no clear growth path, we will look at how you can merge both career growth and career development to achieve a successful career:

1. Aspire to embrace change and innovation: People that make that impact in their career are people that are curious about changing things and people that also embrace things that have changed. Finding new ways to solve problems and also creating new ways of doing things within your organization can help sharpen your skills. Improving your skills to become an expert in your field can also move you up the ladder to achieving career growth.
2. Always embrace learning opportunities: To move upwards in your career, it is important for you to always look out for and embrace learning opportunities. Learning and developing more knowledge about your job role is developing your career. While learning and improving your career, it is also important for you to learn how career growth works within your organization, learn from others how you can move up the career ladder within your organization.
3. Build yourself outside yourself: A good way to learn and keep up with trends and technology is to look out for opportunities to build yourself outside yourself. Building yourself outside yourself is simply grow from developing skills on your own to reaching out and learning from others that have gone ahead of you. It is important for you to share ideas and interest with people performing the same role as you or in the same job field

How Employers Can Help Employee Achieve Career Advancement:

1. Building a good relationship and encouraging dialogue: As an employer, it is important for you to encourage your team members to dialogue and create a good relationship among one another. Creating a comfortable environment for your employees to come together and discuss ideas and successes they have been able to achieve. Exchanging of ideas can help your employees develop the interest to learn more and develop their career.
2. Find out what your employees want: As an employer, it is very important for you to find out what your employees want so that you can encourage them to grow. An employee that is doing what he doesn’t like is like not to be interested in growing or developing at all. Knowing what your employees want, and helping them become better at that one thing they love doing will help them grow and develop their career and at the same time will help retain your best talents.
3. Always reward outstanding employees: As an employer, rewarding good and exceptional employees is another you can help your employees move up the career ladder fast. An employee that is rewarded will always be motivated to do more both for his career and the organization at large.
4. Create a clear career growth path: Most employees are not interested in working in a place that there is no clear career growth path. Employees often want to know what next while working in a particular place. To help your employees achieve career growth and also to help develop within their career, it is important of you to set clear career paths for your employees.

Setting a career path to help your employees focus, because they know the next stage of their growth and advancement. Creating a clear career path growth at different levels will help you retain good employees and also strengthen your organization.

The corporate world is constantly changing with lots of reformations and restructuring, to stay relevant within an organization and even to move ahead career-wise, it is important for you to grow and develop your career at the same time.

You can grow and develop your career only if you have a job that can channel you on a career path. See the latest jobs in Kenya that can help you grow and develop your career today.

Staff Writer

This article was written and edited by a staff writer.