New Year, New You: will 2025 be the year you supercharge your career?
Is 2025 the year you will kickstart or reinvigorate your career? If so, great news, as it’s also the year we are launching a series of new Learning and Development (L&D) initiatives designed to support marine professionals who want fulfilling and purposeful careers. Nicole Luque, our L&D manager, explains.
My role is to help people and organisations gain the skills and knowledge needed to thrive in this fast-paced, and ever-changing, industry. At the IMarEST we are working hard behind the scenes to create new L&D programmes, and are starting to roll out initiatives this year to support every member at all stages of their professional journey.
This piece outlines our exciting plans for 2025 and beyond, which I hope will encourage both our members and other industry professionals to make 2025 the year they supercharge their careers.
Career pathways
One exciting initiative is the launch of the first set of career pathways. These are designed to give a clear, structured route for career progression, helping you understand what skills, qualifications, and experiences are needed at each stage of your journey. We’ll be rolling out career pathways for many different job functions, which will be released over 2025 and beyond.
The pathways have been intentionally designed to make it easy for anyone – whether new to the industry, experienced, or researching their next steps – to know what is needed to advance their careers. This includes technical expertise and broader skills, with examples such as leadership, project management, effective communication or financial budgeting.
The career pathways available are just the start. Over the next few months, we will be developing member-only resources to support anyone wishing to follow a pathway towards their next career stage.
Creating meaningful learning experiences
We’re also focused on creating and delivering learning experiences that will be both engaging and meaningful.
By meaningful, we mean making our learning applicable to real-world situations, which will help you feel both confident and competent in your role, as well as supporting you to achieve your professional development goals. These will include such topics as developing leadership skills to motivate and lead teams, and tools to create inclusive working environments that encourage innovation and collaborative problem solving.
So, watch this space over the next year as we look to launch a range of learning resources in a variety of formats that will be flexible, relevant, and suitable for the diverse needs of our members and professionals across the globe.
Mentoring Programme
We’re also excited to be working on a member-to-member mentoring programme that will create valuable opportunities for knowledge exchange, guidance, and support. This initiative will pair experienced professionals with those looking to grow in their careers, or those seeking peer-to-peer support.
Mentorship can be an incredibly rewarding experience, and the programme will help members connect, learn from each other, and build lasting relationships that will enhance their professional development.
We’ll be recruiting mentors soon but if you want to register your interest now, read on to fill out our L&D survey.
Enhancing the value of membership
When you join IMarEST, you're not only gaining access to a wide range of resources designed to support your professional development, but connecting with a network of peers, mentors, and industry leaders who can directly impact your career progression.
For me personally, the value of being a member at the IMarEST is being part of this strong, supportive, and welcoming community of maritime professionals, who are all working to advance the industry.
Get involved
Naturally, working in L&D I am always keen to hear the different thoughts and ideas from our professionals to help shape the IMarEST learning programme. To help with this, I’ve created a survey for the whole industry (not just for members) that will allow you to have your say. Please do take the time to fill it in.
That is the end of my first blog here at IMarEST. Hopefully that has given you some insight, and hopefully anticipation, for the current and upcoming L&D initiatives.
From career pathways to learning resources, my main goal is to support both our members and those in the wider maritime industry with their professional development, and I look forward to bringing you engaging and meaningful learning experiences over 2025 and beyond.
Fill in the survey here.
