November is Career Development Month, a good time to review the principles of career development and job search.

The five columns in this series will cover developing a career plan, choosing a job target, building skills, revising your resume and conducting a job search outreach.

Did you choose your career and build steps to achieve it, or did you tumble into it backward? Do you even have a career? I won't squander time debating the American idealization of careers. But there is a point that I think is important: Planning.

Whether it is at the onset or later, one must engage in planning in order to build a career. Dumb luck and hard work will carry you only so far.

Layoffs complicate everything, from the plan itself to the story you tell in interviews about your career path. When the work interruption is paired with a transition to a new field, things can get really confusing. The more confusing things are, the more important it is to have a plan.

In the old days, a career plan meant something straightforward, like this: Go to school, get trained, work your way up in a company, retire. This was a good plan, provided you liked your early choices of occupation and employer.

This plan is still available, although its likelihood of 40-year success is somewhat limited. Following are additional concepts to consider. These aren't scientific in any way. But they do provide a good starting point.

♦North Star + career steppingstones. In this model you choose a goal (your North Star) and use it to guide each of your choices. Want to be a lawyer, but you haven't finished college yet? Well, your North Star can help you pick an internship or decide which organization to volunteer for. By making each decision with your career choice in mind, you build the steppingstones to reach that career, even if it has to take much longer than you'd hoped for.

♦Five-year mini-careers. This is a great model for people with a fear of commitment, as well as for those whose fields are changing rapidly. Simply mark off on a timeline the number of years you expect to work, divided into five-year increments. Now select a field of interest to pursue in each segment of time. Consider leaving one blank, to accommodate a period of child-rearing or pursuit of a personal interest.

♦Lifestyle-driven career. What if you're not motivated by work and don't want to spend your productive years chasing a career? Assuming you need an income, your career path may be best developed around your lifestyle. This is where the use of the word career can be challenged. If we're talking about a string of unrelated jobs to support one's family or lifestyle, is that really a career? I don't know, but this path requires planning as much as any other, so I treat it like a career.

Your choice of career and its structure may come easily, or you may decide to take assessments and classes to help you make this decision. Whatever path you follow, let me offer this advice: Pick a date for making the decision. If that date arrives and you don't feel ready to move forward, go with an interim Plan B that leaves some doors open but still moves you forward. Just don't stand still, or you will sink into inertia.

In the meantime, here is one more career planning step: Create your short- and long-term budgets. Since work is the primary driver for your finances, you need to know where you stand in terms of your goals, assets and debts.

Stay tuned for next week's column on getting started with your transition to a new job or career.