What is an Individual Development Plan, and Why You Should Complete One
As a graduate student, an Individual Development Plan (IDP) is a structured tool designed to help you reflect on your skills, interests, and values, clarify your career goals, and map out concrete steps to support your professional development. Completing an IDP is a valuable exercise because it encourages you to be intentional about your training, align your time and opportunities with both short- and long-term goals, and communicate more effectively with mentors about your progress and aspirations. Rather than assuming a single career path, IDPs support exploration and adaptability, helping you identify skill gaps and prioritize experiences that will prepare you for a wide range of careers. Popular and widely used IDPs include myIDP (for STEM graduate students and postdocs), ImaginePhD (tailored to humanities and social science trainees), ChemIDP (for chemistry), and NIH-supported IDP frameworks commonly used in biomedical research, all of which combine self-assessment, career exploration, and actionable planning to support your growth.
myIDP is a free, online Individual Development Plan created by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in partnership with Science and is widely used by STEM graduate students and postdoctoral researchers. It guides you through a series of self-assessments to evaluate your skills, interests, and values, helps you explore a broad range of scientific career paths, and then supports you in setting specific, achievable goals with timelines and accountability tools. myIDP is especially useful because it translates self-reflection into an actionable plan, making it easier to align your training activities with your career objectives and to facilitate productive conversations with mentors and advisors.
ImaginePhD is a free online career exploration and planning tool for PhD students and postdoctoral scholars in the humanities and social sciences. Humanities and social sciences PhD students and their mentors have long recognized the need for more resources to help bridge the knowledge gap between doctoral education and the realm of career possibilities. ImaginePhD is designed to meet this need by allowing users to: assess their career-related skills, interests, and values; explore careers paths appropriate to their disciplines; create self-defined goals and map out next steps for career and professional development success.
ChemIDP is an online Individual Development Plan created by the American Chemical Society for graduate students and postdoctoral researchers in chemistry and related fields. It provides a structured framework to help you assess your technical and transferable skills, clarify career interests across academic, industrial, government, and nonprofit sectors, and set specific, measurable professional development goals. ChemIDP is especially useful for connecting chemistry-specific competencies with diverse career pathways and for supporting ongoing, productive discussions with advisors about your progress and long-term career plans.