Creating a Career Development Program
As the director of learning and development, you have been tasked with creating a career development program for the senior sales team of your organization. You currently support five individuals on the senior sales team. Each team member has aspirations of becoming either a senior sales manager, sales director, or vice president of sales. None of the team members have any experience in leading a team, but they show some potential for management. Choose one of the roles above (i.e., senior sales manager, sales director, or vice president of sales), and create a PowerPoint presentation outlining a career development program for the employee. In your PowerPoint, please include the elements below.
Describe skills needed to be successful in the desired role.
Discuss three to four training and developmental interventions needed to gain the skills to be successful in the desired role, and provide a timeframe of completion for each intervention. For example, a job rotation program should be completed in 60 to 90 days, and an apprenticeship should be completed in 2 years.
Explain the outcomes of each developmental intervention. For example, “Through this job rotation exercise, you will be able to effectively manage a virtual team.”
Sample Solution
For this presentation, we will be focusing on the role of Vice President of Sales. To be successful in this role, a person needs to possess a wide range of skills such as strong interpersonal and communication capabilities, excellent problem-solving and analytical skills, leadership experience, strategic thinking ability, customer service expertise and the capacity to motivate others (Kuiper et al., 2017).
In terms of training interventions needed to gain the requisite skills for success in this position an appropriate career development program would include job rotation within the sales department combined with formal mentoring by executives already holding similar positions. Job rotation programs offer individuals a better understanding of different facets of the business which can aid them in developing well rounded knowledge base while also providing insight into how decisions at different levels affect both employees and customers (Cerqui & Lyle 2018). Additionally having access to experienced mentors who can offer advice on how best to tackle challenging situations as they arise is invaluable when it comes to gaining insight into what effective leadership looks like (Van Hooft 2011). For example, through job rotations candidates can get exposure to tasks such as leading teams or scheduling staffing needs while receiving guidance from seasoned professionals when making important decisions. The timeframe for completion is 6 months for job rotations and 1 year for formal mentorship programs.
The second part of our program should involve enrolling team members in relevant training courses or seminars related to their desired roles. This could include topics such as negotiation strategies or customer service techniques which are essential for any sales professional but even more crucial when one aims to reach higher level positions within an organization (Liu et al., 2017). These courses could last anywhere from 3 weeks up until 6 months depending on content covered so adequate time must be allocated accordingly. Finally, ongoing coaching sessions should take place throughout each employee’s tenure wherein managers evaluate progress made towards reaching individual goals set out at beginning stages along with discussing potential next steps going forward (Gabarro & Lines 2009). Ideally these meetings should happen every two weeks allowing enough time between sessions while also ensuring that activities are tracked consistently over extended period.
Overall, creating a comprehensive career development program tailored specifically towards helping individuals move up ranks is essential if organizations wish see continuous growth amongst its staff members. By taking proactive measures like those outlined above employers not only increase chances that talented people stay employed but they also create opportunities whereby these same people become future leaders within company structure.
