Completing a Personal Career Plan
Career Plan Checklist
(We did this in Class)
Current situation
Describe your present career situation. You could include:
The factors in your life that may have a bearing on your career development such as:
- What you are currently studying
- Whether you have any hobbies or interests that might impact upon your career
- Where you are based geographically and whether you have transport
- Whether you have dependants or caring responsibilities that may impact upon your career choice
An explanation of how you are viewing the next stage of your career:
- What career transitions you are facing at the moment
- The choices and decisions you are making at the moment (or need to make)
- What your career ideas are
- How confident you are feeling about these choices, ideas and transitions
What you want to achieve by creating this career plan. For instance maybe you want to:
- Generate a list of realistic career options
- Gain certainty that you definitely want to work in a particular occupation
- Work out what you will do to enter a particular career area
Ideal Situation
Describe and explain your ideal career situation. How far into the future you visualise is up to you.
You may like to comment on:
- A specific job you’d like to do in the future (eg Film Maker)
- The type of work you’d like to do (eg Environmental Film Making)
- A client group you’d like to work with (eg Documentaries )
- A specific organisation you want to work in (Surfers Against Sewage)
- The sector or industry you want to work in
- A particular person you want to work with or for
- The responsibilities you want to have in your job (eg Storyboarding, Editor)
- The skills/ abilities you’ll be using in this ideal situation
- Where you want to live and work geographically
- The benefits your work provides (eg job security, being able to afford luxury items, having time to spend with family, being able to work flexible hours)
SWOt AnaLYSIS
Strengths
Identify and explain the strengths you have in relation to your ideal situation. These could include:
- Personal values (eg helping others, earning a large amount of money)
- Skills (eg team work, organisational skills or more specific skills such as being able to composite or create 3D Models
- Personal qualities (eg determination, approachability)
- Knowledge (gained from studies or experience)
- The amount and/or type of experience you have
- Contacts that may provide useful career information or experience
- Money or time to spend developing employability
- Experience and/or knowledge of the career area you’re interested in
Include a reflection on how you think these strengths will be useful in your ideal situation and in your career planning. For instance you may identify that you find it easy to make new contacts and networking is the main way that people find jobs in the sector you’ve selected.
Weaknesses
Identify and explain any weaknesses that could cause barriers to your ideal situation. These may include:
- Lack of skills, knowledge, qualifications or experience
- A mismatch between your personal qualities or values and those that are important in your chosen career area
- Lack of contacts
- Lack of confidence in your own abilities
- Health issues that impact upon career choice
- Lack of money or time to spend doing the things necessary to move towards your ideal situation
- Lack of transport
- A limited understanding of job opportunities, entry requirements and career pathways in the career area you’re interested in
Include a reflection on how you will deal with, and overcome, any of these weaknesses. Practical steps you are going to take to address areas for improvement should be included within the ‘steps towards goal’ section.
Opportunities
Identify opportunities that your research has highlighted. These may include:
- Established entry routes into your ideal job or field (eg a postgraduate course, a placement).
- Opportunities that you create yourself to build skills and experience (eg setting up a student society, creating your own portfolio).
- New openings in the labour market (eg if the companies you are interested in are diversifying their work activities maybe you could apply for employment in one of their new specialisms).
- Unique selling points (maybe in the industry you have chosen there is a lack of people with the skills and experience you have and you can use this as an opportunity to stand out from others).
- Self employment – maybe you have spotted a gap in the market for a product or service that you could provide through setting up your own business.
- Career progression once you have successfully entered the job, organisation or sector you have in mind.
- Include a reflection on how you view these opportunities. You may find the following questions helpful:
- What has caused these new opportunities? You may like to comment on Government policies, the economy, customer/ client demand, cultural and societal issues, emerging technology or environmental agendas.
- Which opportunities relate to you most and why?
- Which opportunities will you take advantage of and why?
- How might your strengths and weaknesses help or limit you from taking advantage of these opportunities?
Threats
Identify threats that your research has highlighted. These may include:
- Job shortages or recruitment freezes in the area you are interested in
- Competition from other job seekers
- Down sizing of organisations you want to work for
- Lack of opportunities in the geographical area you want to work in
Include a reflection to analyse these threats. You may find these questions helpful:
- What has caused these threats? You may like to comment on Government policies, the economy, customer/ client demand, cultural and societal issues, emerging technology or environmental agendas.
- How will you deal with these threats? Will you create a contingency plan to fall back on? Will you adapt your ‘ideal situation’ in light of this information? Will you put greater effort into addressing your areas for improvement?
Explain in your ‘steps towards goals’ section how you aim to achieve these amended goals.
Steps towards goals
Your SWOT analysis should have highlighted action you need to take to maximise strengths and opportunities and to deal with weaknesses and threats.
You now need to turn this into a practical plan of action with steps that are SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time bound). Here are some tips:
GOALS
Break your goal down
Break your goal down into smaller steps which are specific. For example: ‘I aim to get a place on a teacher training course’ is not specific. These steps are more specific:
- Use the ‘UCAS Teacher Training’ course search to find out where I could train
- Look at course directories to find out their entry requirements
- See a careers adviser for tips on how to complete my application form
Make your steps measurable
Make sure you will be able to measure when each step has been completed. Eg ‘I will develop my confidence’ is not measurable, but ‘I will volunteer to lead the presentation on the 14th July to build my confidence’ is measurable.
Set steps that are realistic
Make sure each step is realistic and achievable. Eg ‘by next week I will get a job in graphic design’ is not necessarily achievable because the decision to recruit you lies with another person. If you were to say ‘by next week I will submit my CV for at least 3 graphic design jobs’ this is achievable.
Set dates
Set yourself a date by which you will complete each step. Also set review dates to check your progress and make changes.
Resources
List the resources you will use to put together your career plan. There could include career websites such as Prospects or Target Jobs, professional body websites and publications, newspaper articles, company websites or brochures. People are also an excellent resource; talking to careers advisers and people you know who are employed in your chosen career can be enormously helpful in clarifying your plans.
Reflection
Your career ideas and plans develop and change all the time so it is important that your careers action plan is a living document rather than something that you complete once and never look at again.
Set yourself a date for when you will review and modify your careers action plan. When reflecting you may like to comment on:
- How has your current situation changed? Eg perhaps the way that you are now viewing the transitions you face has changed.
- How has your ideal situation changed? Maybe you career ideas have radically changed or you have become more specific about what you want in the future.
- How are you now seeing your strengths and weaknesses? Are you aware of new strengths or weaknesses that you didn’t see previously? Have you successfully overcome any weaknesses?
- Are you aware of any new opportunities or threats? How far have you got in capitalising upon the opportunities that you have identified? What have you done to minimise any threats?
- What steps towards your goals have you taken? Are you on schedule? Have any steps been difficult to implement? Why? What will you do differently as a result?
- How have you found the process of building and implementing a careers action plan? What have you learnt about the way you like to plan? Which techniques have you found useful and which will you use again? Which will you change in the future?
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