Career Tools
Click on the title to go
directly to that section:
The Career Planning Process
5 Most Common Barriers to Career Planning
To be successful in work search, you need to ......
Ways to identify your skill strengths
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Career Planning
Process
Step 1. Self Information:
Interests, skills, values
Financial needs, health
Lifestyle, family situation
Level of education, training
Step 2. Identifying Alternatives:
Identify at least 12 alternative because you
Your ideas or those of others
will lose some in the researching stage.
Paper Exercises
Step 3. Researching:
Using printed materials
Interviewing people
Volunteering, job shadowing
Labour market information
Library
Internet Sometimes here, after the research is done
you find you have nothing left you like, and
Step 4. Deciding: have to go back to Step 2.
Decision Making styles
Methods of evaluation
Self information matched with research
Step 5. Action Planning:
Identifying and defining the steps needed to achieve the goal
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
5 Most Common Barriers to
Career Planning
FEAR OF FAILURE:
Nothing worthwhile is achieved without some risk.
FEAR OF THE UNKNOWN:
Investigate - make it the known!
PROCRASTINATION:
Start with small steps.
LACK OF SUPPORT:
If no family support, seek it from friends or community resources.
RELUCTANCE TO PLAN:
Easy solution : Plan!
You need accurate information
about yourself
- who you are
- what you want in your worklife
You need accurate and up to
date information about the world of work.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To be successful
in work search, you need to ......
- educate yourself as to work
realities - to ensure your marketability
- have an awareness and understanding of the external economic situation
- know the trends in the workplace
- have self awareness
- what do you care about?
- what gives your life meaning?
- what engages you and keeps your
interest?
Only by knowing yourself will you be able to make the decisions that reflect
your most important values and concerns.
Doing work that is not suited to
you doesn't make you feel good
- you feel unproductive
- unhappiness and depression set it
- it is much more fatiguing than well
suited work
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ways to identify your skill
strengths
1. Brainstorm on all the things
you've done, both paid and unpaid
2. Do a skills analysis of the
jobs your had, and other things you've done. What were the duties and
responsibilities? List the skills required for each.
3. Think about things you've done
that gave you the most feeling of satisfaction
4. Look at yourself through the
eyes of a stranger. I someone who doesn't know you at all were to follow
you and watch what you did for several days, what positive things would that
person notice about your abilities, your work habits, attitudes and the things
you enjoy and do well?
5. Ask people you know well and
who are familiar with the world of work help identify your skills, what would
they tell you? Often family are not the best people to ask, but ask
friends, teachers, previous coworkers etc. Write down everything they say,
then look for patterns.
6. Use word lists to help
identify your skills
How many skills does the average
person have?
500-700, many of them are so
natural to us, that we don't even think of them as skills. Think of the
things you do that your friends and family don't do, or don't do well.
This could well be a skill that you have.
Out of every single activity you
do, you can identify skills. Write down a list of what things you do, then
make a list of skills from each one.
