Plan
Get to know yourself
Understanding who you are in the world of work, what you want from a career, roles that might suit you and how to communicate effectively all needs to be established before you start exploring career and job options. The key to a successful career is knowing what you want from an employer as well as what you offer, you can then align your wants and needs with those of employers.
When thinking about your career it is vital to understand what motivates you, your values, wants and needs to ensure that your career decisions are going to work for you.
This ‘Plan’ section focuses on self-analysis related to you and your career preferences.
This is the place to start! The following resources will get you gently thinking about where you are now and where you might want to head. All 3 resources will only take you about 30 minutes to complete in total.
- How are you feeling about your career? This simple knowledge navigator will start you thinking about why you have even visited this toolkit! It will then lead you to some additional resources for your chosen areas.
- Career canvas – Using the ‘coach yourself’ questions start to gather some initial thoughts about your attitude and approach to jobs and careers. You might at this stage even like to start thinking about a very simple goal / aim or objective you may head towards in your planning.
- 5 Minute Career Action Plan Template – Now start to move forward a little more with your planning. This resource will introduce the career planning cycle to you and start to ask more specific questions for each area. You can then slowly build on this information as you move through the next sections of the toolkit.
This section now starts to really focus on you and who you are in the world or work. The activities below will help you analyse various behaviours and experiences that are important to understand when planning for job roles and careers:
- The Mirror Test– Working out what you want to be known for compared with what you’re actually known for is a great way to get feedback. This 10 minute activity starts to give you an idea about who you are in the workplace and who you want to be.
- Exploring your values – In order to align your wants and needs with the wants and needs of an organisation you need to understand what your values and beliefs are – and how important it is for you to align with an employer. In this activity you will learn about what your values are and why they are important.
- My emotional intelligence – Emotional Intelligence means being able to understand your own and others’ emotions – at work, this skill allows you to accurately motivate and influence your own and other peoples’ behaviours. Is your Emotional Intelligence aligned to your job roles and career aspirations? If not where you might develop them or might you revisit roles that align to your emotional intelligence?
- Motivatiors and Drivers– Adapted from ‘What Colour is Your Parachute’ by Richard Nelson Bolles, this simple self-assessment helps you to consider what your priorities are in life in relation to career choices – identifying your priorities. This is a vital first step before you make any career decisions.
- Luminalearning Splash App- Become more self-aware and learn how you relate to others in the workplace. This app provides a visual representation of who you are.
- Personal SWOT Analysis – All of your skills, behaviours and experience will be transferable across lots of different job roles and career fields. A SWOT analysis can help you analyse current skills and identify where they are transferable, or where gaps might exist when looking at job descriptions etc. This will help you step into a different role and will open up more opportunities.
The time I spent getting to know ‘me’ paid dividends when looking for job roles
Grade D Administrator
Career Planning Steps
