All About Careers
The Career Planning Process
Step 1. Self Assessment
During this first step, you will use a variety of tools to gather information about yourself. Learn about your:
• Interests: The things you enjoy doing
• Work-Related Values: The ideas and beliefs that are important to you and guide your actions
• Personality Type: Your social traits, motivations, strengths and weaknesses, and attitudes
• Aptitudes: A natural talent or an ability learned through training and education
• Preferred Work Environments: The type of workplaces you prefer. For example, indoors or outdoors, office or factory, and noisy or quiet
• Developmental Needs: Your cognitive abilities that have an impact on the type of training or education you can complete and what kind of work you can do
• Realities: Circumstances that may influence your ability to train for an occupation or work in it
You will identify career interests that might be a good fit for you during the self assessment, but you will need more information before you can make a final decision. Step two will help you do that.
Step 2.
Career
Exploration
Making informed, effective decisions involves considering:
• Contributions you hope to make in your community and to the world at large
• Your unique set of values, beliefs, and morals
• Your skill set and strengths
• Your personality
• Your career and leisure interests
• Your options in occupations and education
Your career decision journey is a constant process of exploration, discovery and re-evaluation that will repeat throughout your life. You will continue to gain useful information about yourself and your preferences through every job and experience you have.
• Identify your strengths
• Explore careers
• Re-evaluate regularly: As you grow and mature, the information you used to make an initial career decision may change. Continue to evaluate career-related information to ensure that the career you have chosen suits you at any given point in your life.
• Keep your options open: Many students believe that that their career plans must be clearly defined. That is not entirely accurate. It may be necessary to explore a variety of job options. Careers evolve over time. For some, it may be necessary to work different jobs in order to identify a career that is a good fit.
• Your first job does not determine the rest of your life. Knowing this will help you eliminate unnecessary pressure. It is likely that your first job may be very different than your last job. It is not a predictor of the rest of your life.
• Take risks. Be willing to explore different internship and job opportunities, and be willing to experience uncertainty and failure. The saying that “we learn more from our failures than our successes” is true.
• Identify and take advantage of opportunities. Go to workshops, seminars and conferences. Get involved in clubs and organizations. Obtain internships, research opportunities, and jobs. The more experiences you have, the more you will be able to clarify your passions, skills, interests, and values.
• Make time to do your research. It is important to obtain realistic information about different careers.
Step 3. Match
Finally it's time to make a match! During step three, you will decide which occupation is the best fit for you based on what you learned during steps one and two.
• Identify the occupation in which you are most interested and one or two alternatives on which to fall back if, for any reason, you can't pursue your first choice.
• Give serious thought to how you will prepare to enter your chosen career, the costs associated with education and training, and whether you will face any barriers, which are the realities discussed during step one.
• Go back to step two if you find you need to explore your options further before making a decision.
Once you have chosen a career, you can go on to step four, which will lead you toward your first job in your new career.
Step 4. Action
During this step, you will write a career action plan. It will serve as a guide to reaching your ultimate goal of getting a job in the career you deemed to be a good match during step three. Identify what long-term and short-term goals you will have to reach to get to the ultimate one.
Start investigating appropriate education and training programs, for example, colleges, graduate schools, or apprenticeship programs. Then start preparing for required entrance examinations or applying for admission.
If you are ready to seek employment, develop a job search strategy. Identify and learn about potential employers. Write your resume and cover letters. Begin to prepare for job interviews.