Interviews

Career plans: What are they and what are the keys to success?

blog Olga Milián career plans at niikiis
24 Feb

This week we interviewed Olga MiliánOlga Milián, intercultural trainer, mentor in employability processes, teacher at EADA Business School, trainer and Coach with CCL (Center for Creative Leadership). Olga has developed her career in the luxury hotel industry, in different countries and in different functional areas related to Operations and Human Resources. In recent years she has been Human Resources Director with different hotel opening projects.

All this background has led her today to focus on the development of people, through training and coaching with EADA and CCL, and, on a more individual level, as a mentor in employability processes, helping people to reinvent themselves or seek their next professional step in an accurate and happy way.

With her we will talk about how to develop your professional career on a personal level, knowing at all times where you want to go, where you come from, what you are good at, what you have learnt, what you have learnt, what you still have to learn.

Welcome, Olga. To begin with, we would like you to tell us a little bit about yourself and your passion for people.

I have worked in the international luxury hotel sector. My experience? From cleaning rooms to Human Resources management, I have enjoyed and learnt leading teams in hotel openings in different countries ... and I have discovered that what makes me happiest is helping people in their professional development. That led me to train as a professional coach, I am a professor at EADA, a business school in Barcelona, and a trainer and coach with CCL (Center for Creative Leadership), one of the leading providers of research-based training in leadership development for individuals, teams, organisations and society in general.

So, what is a career plan?

I identify more with the term "career path management" than with "career planning" per se. It consists of asking oneself "What do I want to be when I grow up", at least every 3 years, with no age limit...? It consists of knowing yourself, finding your talent, your interest, what really excites you as a personal and professional activity, in each of the different stages of your life. It is about understanding that this is about training, transforming, evolving, changing... nowadays "careers" are more nomadic and fluid.

What challenges might we encounter along the way, on a professional level?

Continuous change, much of that change motivated by us because we will need to change to evolve, to change company, country, profession, method... and that is great, as long as each change maintains the formula of "professional happiness" that the Japanese call IKIGAI. If we take the IKIGAI to our professional life, it means that we are doing something at each stage that meets 4 requirements:

  1. We like to
  2. We are good at it
  3. We get paid for it
  4. It brings value to society.

What do we need to know about ourselves to be professionally happy?

We need to know what we are good at, what we are not good at, in what environments we feel most comfortable (industry, product, organisational culture, leadership style, way of working in teams, etc.), what is our purpose, our vocation, our professional dedication(s). Again, we need to be coherent and courageous and really want to evolve.

What would you say are the best strategies for success?

Seneca said that LUCK is what happens when PREPARATION and OPPORTUNITY meet and merge. I deeply believe that applies to our professional happiness. When someone says "how lucky you were" I always detect that people think that we have won the lottery, and do not see the effort and enthusiasm that goes into every step, both to prepare and to look for the opportunity.

What impact do career plans have on a company and on employees?

During my years in Human Resources in hotel chains, I have managed, accompanied and enjoyed the successful careers of many professionals who have worked with me. As companies, we have a duty to develop the talent of our professionals in order to be more competitive, have better results, better leadership and more happiness. We must understand that a career plan is not just a vertical structure, it is not just about "moving up", it is about evolving, learning, keeping up to date, positioning our key competencies and developing new competencies as well. And we must also understand that we cannot and should not "retain talent", people need to evolve and we contribute at different stages to different projects. Companies also benefit from this rotation, new talent, new visions, more innovation.
We thank Olga Milián for taking the time to share her knowledge with us. To find out more about the importance of developing career plans, feel free to join our next live broadcast on 3 March at 18h on our YouTube channel: Career plans: what are they and what are the keys to success?-YouTube. We will be interviewing Olga in full to cover everything about managing your employability and professional happiness. Don't miss it!
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