If you're stuck for job ideas and knowing where your skills might best be served, it's worth taking the time to come up with a career development plan - simply follow these four steps to choosing a career Show A career plan is a strategy you'll continuously develop to manage your learning and progression throughout your working life. Consisting of four stages, its purpose is to help you visualise the actions you need to take to achieve your career goals, and how to put these actions into practice. The four stages of a career plan are:
Career planning is important for a number of reasons - having a career development plan in place reduces the risk of you making impulsive decisions, and it helps you to recognise when you're ready to look for new opportunities and develop new skills. This model can be used by anyone - from school leavers to students, graduates and career changers. Learn more about what the process involves and how to map out your career journey. 1. Identify your skills and interestsChoosing a career is a big deal. You'll spend a significant amount of your life at work and so in order to enjoy your job, remain motivated and fulfil your potential, you need to make your career choices wisely. You first need to know yourself. This means taking stock of your skills and assessing your interests and values. It's important to understand your range of skills and knowledge, so you can see if they're a good fit for the job you'd like to do. Being aware of the skills you have also helps to highlight any gaps that may need to be filled to achieve your goals. Make a list of all your transferable and specialist skills, with examples of when you've demonstrated each. An honest assessment of your skills, values and interests will prove useful when narrowing down your options in the next step. You can also see where you measure up in terms of the skills employers are looking for. Consider where you are now, where you want to be and how you're going to get there when it comes to fulfilling your career aspirations. If choosing a career has left you feeling lost, start by asking yourself the following questions:
If you're struggling to identify your strengths, weaknesses and character traits, taking practice psychometric tests could bring them to light. By the end of this step, you'll have identified the sort of jobs that will suit you, but won't yet have enough information to make a decision on which to pursue. 2. Explore career ideasThis is all about researching the job market and career paths that interest you and narrowing down your options. Consider what your ideal job sector would be, and discover its key trends by researching the local, national and global jobs market. This will help you to discover more potential career paths, and understand which roles are expanding or declining. There are three overarching job sectors. These are:
Browsing job profiles may introduce you to some less obvious career paths where your skills and qualifications could be useful. Compile a shortlist of around five to ten jobs, before considering the advantages and disadvantages of each in terms of:
You must also consider which size of employer best fits with your personality and work ethic. Are you more suited to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), large companies or self-employment? This is the perfect time to consider work experience and internships, work shadowing and volunteering opportunities. They'll help you to gain an insight into the areas you're interested in before committing yourself to a certain career path. 3. Make a decisionNow you're ready to start making decisions. Combine what you've learned about yourself with what you've discovered about your options and the graduate jobs market. From your job ideas list, decide which role interests you the most and select one or two alternatives to fall back on if you're not able to pursue your first choice. To help make a decision, ask yourself the following questions:
If you're struggling to reach a conclusion, there are a number of exercises you can try to aid the decision-making process. Listing the pros and cons of a particular job or career is often useful, as is completing a personal SWOT analysis:
There's plenty of support available to help you decide. Look to:
Keep in mind that you'll probably be suited to more than one career and today's jobseekers usually change career direction more than once in their working life. The key to being employable is having the ability to adapt and learn new skills. Learn more about making a career change. 4. Set achievable goalsYour career plan should outline how you'll get to where you want to be, what actions are needed and when, and separated into your short, medium and long-term goals. Constantly review your progress, especially after each short-term goal is reached. You must also establish a backup career development plan, in case your situation changes. Map several alternative paths to your long-term goal, considering how you'll overcome the types of problems you might encounter - such as training requirements - at each step. Your first short-term goal may involve improving your CV and cover letter. Other short or medium-term targets could include undertaking relevant internships, gaining volunteering experience or attending careers fairs. Make an appointment with your university's careers service to ask an adviser to check over your career plan and discuss your career choices, if you feel you need some professional reassurance. During COVID-19, many university careers services moved their programme of activities and events online to support students and graduates during the crisis, but as things start to open up again, you may be able to make face-to-face as well as virtual appointments. Finally, don't forget that career planning is a continuous process. Revisit and review your aims and objectives throughout your career, and don't feel constrained by the goals you've set - the structure of a career plan should help you clearly map out the route to trying something new. This Prospects webinar aired May 2021. Find out more
What is an example of a career choice?A career could mean working as a doctor, lawyer, teacher, carpenter, veterinary assistant, electrician, cashier, teacher or hairstylist.
Why are career choices important?It paves the way to economic security. An occupation's earning potential is a major consideration for most when deciding on a suitable career. Choosing the right profession means that you will be able to have economic security — a factor that plays a key role in our overall well-being.
What is the full meaning of career?1 : a profession for which one trains and which is undertaken as a permanent calling a career in medicine —often used before another noun a career diplomat. 2 : a field for or pursuit of consecutive progressive achievement especially in public, professional, or business life Washington's career as a soldier.
What is career path or career choice?A career plan is a strategy you'll continuously develop to manage your learning and progression throughout your working life. Consisting of four stages, its purpose is to help you visualise the actions you need to take to achieve your career goals, and how to put these actions into practice.
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