In almost all the developed and developing countries retention and improved utilization of talent was being preferred over unlimited external recruitment until middle of the 90’s of the last century.

Later on, persisting recession being faced by world economies coupled with a sudden jolt received from September, 11 incident, majority of multinationals as well as locally based business enterprises resorted to restructuring and rightsizing throughout the world.

Hence career planning and management of existing staff was found totally ignored particularly in developing countries where redundancy and downsizing generally based on irrational criteria were taken as remedial steps to turn around the affected sectors.

In the case of Pakistan public sector corporations’ and banks’ management in quest for recouping their accumulating losses practised retrenchment of jobs and separation of existing staff by offering golden hand shake side by side intake of large number of staff and consultants from outside. Resultantly, concept of career planning and development got immense set back. However lately, public sector organizations on completion of their restructuring process have started laying emphasis on developing professionalism and expertise of excellence amongst their staff through proper career planning.

The management and planning of career involves manager human resources, staff, external parties and individuals themselves. It is a process that includes many activities of varying intensity by organisation relating to needs of particular employee group.

Apparently the responsibility of career-planning rests with the employee. The employee has the control over critical situation whether to join and stay in an organisation, whether to seek or accept specific job assignment and whether to strive for his/her own growth.

What management can do is to provide systems and information that can influence the personal decisions.

But on the other hand, every employee is influenced by the design of the job and the performance standards and objectives established.

As such, in all progressive organizations, the responsibility of career planning, career building is shared. The individual needs flow from broad personal objectives and career plans, and are transformed into company’s relevant career development plans.

Company needs stem from broad business objectives which are to be achieved through human resources as responsibility for administration and maintenance of Career Management/ Planning system which serves individual as well as company needs, is mutually shared.

Since world has become a global village and systems are not free from outside influence, now it is the general view that basically career management systems are intended to serve management needs and individual employees need for information and involvement is given least weightage.

Yet, in some countries through legislation and in some to give the issue a realistic touch, personal records of the employees and ACRs which have effect on potentialities of employees are made open to them.

Similarly privacy on the part of employees in relation to outcome of psychological test which can invade private life of an employee is strictly guarded. Similarly, reasons for one’s termination from service etc, are not to be made public unless demanded by law or in a situation when organizational interest is at stake.

The career planning and management of employees is routed through following stages:

Recruitment: The primary issues in recruitment process relevant to human resource planning are:

1) Strategies for attracting sufficient flow of applicants having relevant CV

2) Defining and analyzing relevant recruitment requirements and job qualifications.

3) Applying valid selection strategies and thereafter facilitating joining up process.

As regard to the strategy for attracting qualified applicants, it is usually to tap Universities, professional colleges, government and military offices. However, complications arise in recruitment of professional and technical talent when their source fail to supply required number of experts not only due to change in technology but also due to abruptly changed socio-economic, political and demographic set ups.

During seventies of the last century, it happened in United States that quite a number of aeronautical engineers were laid of due to curtailment of space activities, as such students drifted towards other lines of engineering.

In later years when space activity with improved technology revived, adequate number of aeronautical engineers were not available.

In order to put in place proper recruitment policy due attention is needed towards issues like labour market conditions and excessive recruitment demands resultant of poor retention of already recruited staff etc.

The recruitment policy of an organisation is strengthened by use of specifications that are more precisely defined, based on analysis of the assignment to be allocated to position in question. This would provide a set of specific criteria for searching out right type of applicant.

The communication of such criteria through advertisement or through some other source to prospective candidate help self- searching and for those viable candidates serve as a basis for more realistic expectations, leading to their retention in the Organisation for longer period.

After passing through the stages of selection and recruitment, career planning of an employee undergoes process of evaluation of his/her performance on continuous basis.

From the outset, that is from the stage of induction training performance of the employee is regularly assessed and monitored with particular emphasis being placed on identifying those who exhibit commitment and leadership combined with desired personal traits and initiative. Their strengths and weaknesses need to be analyzed and training adjusted accordingly.

In order to facilitate assessment of an employee as a continuous process and with uniformity, detailed guidelines need to be given to reporting officer/assessor. Subjectivity should never be discounted.

In addition to regular analysis of individual his / her interaction with the group and relationship built-up with others should also be observed and if clash arises, employee concerned should be transferred to some other job/assignment, both in organizational as well as employee’s interest.

This leads to a very important and relevant aspect of career planning that is matching individuals with the kind of work they are best suited to perform.

The internal placement and job matching is essential in a progressive organization to:

1) Provide targets for individuals relating to their personal development.

2) Assure management of an adequate supply of talent to meet projected needs.

3) Assure objectivity and fairness in considering alternative individuals as candidates for a vacancy or anticipated vacancy.

4) To expand the career progression possibility.

It is heartening to note that after the advent of information technology in quite a number of developing countries, and despite recent disruption of their economies, their both public and private sector entities are laying emphasis on planned career progression of individuals.

This relates to their movement from one job to another based on career plans, job requirements and individual appraisals. The informal candidate search by manager as well as computer-based personnel information systems maintained by leading multinational and national organizations in developed and some developing countries are usually the common approaches for inter placement and job matching.

The next and the vital stage of career building is training and development. It is one of the important means of influencing management values, attitudes and practices in human resource management.

The main problem relating to training is to identify training needs. Normally as a part of appraisal process each employee establishes some specific needs for training. Such needs are:

a) For improving performance on current/existing job.

b) For preparing the individual for the next job / higher assignment.

c) For facilitating the individual to consider alternative career chances ( for example a bank officer who wishes to move from general banking side to international banking desk).

These needs are identified from discussion between individuals and their managers / supervisors.

Another approach to identify training needs is to conduct training need analysis through an open-ended survey questionnaire, soliciting suggestions regarding training and development. The survey may address both general needs (for example planning, decision making, control and public speaking ability etc.) or specific job oriented needs.

While devising training programmes on the basis of job or set criteria, company is exposed to minimum risk of wastage. In the matter of training and development courses, in house training offers the greatest potential control, but in the long run it does not have the attribute of creativity.

Hence help of the external training agencies is sought. The external training packages offer advantages, but sometime fail to match company needs precisely. Thus there is need to maintain proper balance while harnessing in-house and ex-house sources of training.

To identify fast track officers/managers is yet another stage involved in the process of career development which need to be vigorously practised by the companies on continuous basis. The process is known as “tiering”. It is a prediction of an individual’s potentials ultimately to achieve particular career level and it also helps in assessing the store of human resources available. This information helps the company to predict the likely short fall or surplus in a particular category of staff and adopt recruitment and training strategies accordingly. The interview, performance appraisal and performance during the training programmes form the basis of identifying fast track officers/managers. The tiering when practised brings two broad classifications of staff. One includes the staff, which is selected for the management development programme and the other which categorizes the staff reaching upto middle management level during the course of their career.

Apart from above discussed factors need to be looked into by management, other elements like attractive retirement benefits, adequate motivation and incentives extended by employers have great impact on career planning/management from individual point of view.

Most important thing is awareness on the part of employee for the need of their growth accompanied by area of their vision and power of perception and on the other hand extent of management attention to career management needs.