Career planning and decision making

Career is a whole of life concept and not just what you are currently doing as a ‘job’. It is the
Interrelatedness of all things currently in your life – study, leisure, family, friends, voluntary
and/or community work, and how you fit it all together.

Career planning
Why is career planning so important? 
There are so many choices and options available and this can make planning your
career quite difficult. The new 'world of work' requires you to be in charge of creating
your own career; managing it will be a life-long journey.

Your most important asset is yourself. Therefore, the more you invest in yourself in
the form of skills and knowledge development, self-awareness, networking and gaining
relevant experiences, the more you expand your opportunities.

The steps to career planning 

Step One → Define

The first step in career planning is self-understanding. Your current knowledge and
skills, your interests, values, and the type of work you would prefer to do.

Step Two → Discover

The second step in career planning is career exploration. Learning all you can about
the world of work and today's job market.
Step Three → Decide
The third step is career pathways. Gathering information about work and study,
checking out what is available and what is realistic then narrowing your choices and
prioritizing.

Step Four → Develop

The fourth step is to create an action plan. Prepare an action plan and strategies
towards the achievement of your life/career goals.

Step Five → Deliver

The final step is to put your plan into action and make it happen. Start the journey
towards a career you will love.

Define

Self-assessment
Self-assessment or self-understanding is the process of knowing yourself. Before you
can decide what you want to be, you first have to define who you are.

As you continue to develop both personally and professionally throughout your career, it
will be necessary for you to re-assess yourself periodically in relation to your career goal
provider.

Self-assessment
Self-assessment or self-understanding is the process of knowing yourself. Before you
can decide what you want to be, you first have to define who you are.

As you continue to develop both personally and professionally throughout your career, it
will be necessary for you to re-assess yourself periodically in relation to your career goal
provider.

Self-assessment

Skills

A skill is the ability to do something well as a result of experience. Skills are acquired
from work experiences, community involvement, and many other roles people have in
their lives.
Some skills can be transferred from one role to another – these are called transferable
skills. Some skills only relate to a specific job – these are known a special knowledge
skills (or specialist skills), eg install electrical wiring, draw up house plans, prepare
financial accounts.

Skills can come from a variety of areas:

• Life experiences – voluntary or unpaid work

• Work experiences – paid work, full time, part time or project based

• Teaching yourself – learning done without enrolling in a course, nor done at work

• Training on the job – formal learning done at work, as well as skills gained at work

• Formal study – learning done at a tertiary education institution

Knowledge

Your knowledge is one of your major career assets. It includes both your general
knowledge and your specialised knowledge.

A considerable amount of our knowledge is developed through formal education and

training, however, there are a broad range of other arenas in which we accumulate
knowledge such as through hobbies and interests.

Interests

Things you enjoy doing and are passionate about can provide important clues about
work or career interests.
Think about how you spend your spare time, what do you find the most fun? What
captures your attention and why?

Values

The motivation or personal incentives needed for job satisfaction are unique to each
person. By examining your values, you can then determine what is important to you and
prioritize what role work will play in your life.

Values are the things that are important to us. They are the principles that give meaning
to our lives. Jobs that don’t meet our values may make us feel uncomfortable or
unhappy. Our values are often influenced by our culture, upbringing, family and current
lifestyle, among other things.

Values can be broken into three categories:

• Intrinsic values - These are the intangible rewards, those related to motivation and
satisfaction such as helping others

• Extrinsic values - These are the tangible rewards or conditions such as having good
work hours or being paid well

• Lifestyle values - These are the personal values associated with how and where you
want to live such as wanting to live in a rural setting.

Work preferences

This is the characteristics of the place you would like to live and work, the work
environment, the job itself and the setting, your co-workers, and the competencies and
skills you would like to use, and income and benefits.
Aptitudes

Talents and natural abilities indicate potential in a particular area. People often take for
granted the skills that come easily to them, yet those are precisely the areas that you
should explore.

If you understand your abilities, you'll be aware of skill areas that may require extra time
and effort for you to learn or avoid careers that would require you to struggle with
learning skills that may not come as easily to you.

Personality

Your unique combination of emotional and behavioral characteristics constitutes your

personality.

Different careers align with different personality types: knowing your personality can
enable you to enhance your career choices and ultimately your career success.

Try the personality test below to discover where you might fit in career wise.

Defining yourself
Well-known career theorist, Dr John Holland developed a system of classifying work
and personality types into 6 clusters or families. These clusters are Realistic,
Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising and Conventional or RIASEC. 

Most people prefer some 'families' more than others. If your preferences are ranked in
the order of your most favourite through to your least favourite you can get an idea of
some of the occupations you might prefer. Remember that this is simply an indication
and should be used in conjunction with all the other information you are gathering about
yourself. 

Try the RAISEC Test…

Discover
Career Exploration - The World of Work
It is important to explore the 'world of work' before making a career decision to ensure
that you are well informed of the work environment. Knowing where the jobs are and
how easy it is to get them will influence your choices. Being aware of the obstacles or
trends in the world of work will help you make career enhancing decisions to enable you
to transition into successful employment.

How to find out more

Consider these methods to explore the world of work:

 Research the latest trends in the job market, the hot jobs, job shortages and
where you go for certain job opportunities
 Find our what types of employment contracts are available. What kinds of ways
can you work – part time, full time, job share, flexi-time
 Consider what are some of the differences in today’s world of work compared to
50 years ago, 100 years ago? What does this mean for the future?
 Talk to people who are working in jobs of interest to you. Attend informational
interviews
 Engage in work experiences or volunteering to get a sense of what the role
encompasses.

Career Myths and Realities Quiz

Being aware of career myths that have influenced your career
planning may open up new possibilities for exploration you may not
have considered.

Choose whether you think the following statements are a myth or a

reality:
The earlier a person selects a steady career, the better.

 Myth
 Reality
Answer:

THIS IS A MYTH.

The idea of a steady career for life has changed as each person is likely to have several careers in a
lifetime. The key is to learn how to change, to master career transition skills, and to maximise the
learning you gain from all of your life experiences.

There are many ways of finding out if a person might enjoy working in a
particular occupation besides taking a job in that field.

 Myth
 Reality

Answer:

THIS IS A REALITY.

Job shadowing, research, reading, volunteer work and interviewing those in the field are some other
ways. These methods will save you time and money and enable you to make changes to your career
direction before you are committed to a job.

Somewhere there is a test that can tell me what to do for the rest of my
career.

 Myth
 Reality
Answer:

THIS IS A MYTH.

There are no magic “right” tests, inventories or career assessment instruments to tell you what would
be the perfect career for you. Vocational assessment tools help you assemble your motivations,
interests, skills and values as they are at the point in your life when you complete them.

During his/her lifetime, a person is likely to work in several different

occupations.
  Myth
 Reality

Answer:

THIS IS A REALITY.

It is now estimated that most adults will work in five to seven occupations during their lifetime. Often
people will work in a combination of more than one occupation at any one time. This combination could
include a part time job with regular hours, part time self-employment where hours and income may
fluctuate, and part time creative practice/voluntary/hobby work. For most people there is no "one job
or career for life" anymore.

The current job market determines what career a person should choose.

 Myth
 Reality
Answer:

THIS IS A MYTH.

Individual interests, preferred skills and values determine the occupations in which you
are most likely to be successful and find personally satisfying, plus a passion for what
you have chosen.

The majority of job seekers find jobs through word of mouth.

 Myth
 Reality
Answer:

THIS IS A REALITY.
It is estimated that 80% of those currently employed found out about their jobs throughout networking,
including information interviewing and maintaining mentoring relationships. Employment
advertisements online and in newspapers are only one small component of available opportunities at
any given time.

Changing careers indicates there is something "wrong" about a person.

 Myth
 Reality
Answer:

THIS IS A MYTH.

There are many reasons that career change makes sense: desired new learning and personal growth;
monetary; labour market demand; reassessment of "who I am and want to be". In a rapidly changing
world, career and occupation change is common and does not indicate that there is something "wrong"
with a person.

There is no job security any more.

 Myth
 Reality
Answer:

THIS IS A REALITY.

There is no longer an expectation that employers or organizations will take responsibility for an
individual.

Attribution

This work includes material from the following sources:

Myths and Realities Quiz. Steps to Success - Opportunities. The Univeristy of Queensland. Retrieved
from: http://www.uq.edu.au/student-services/new2uq/steps-to-success/opportunities Licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Australia License.

Narrowing it down
Think about what you learned about yourself in the Define section and what
you have discovered in your career exploration research. Use this
information to choose a few areas of work that you are interested in.

Within each area of work that you are interested in, identify a job title that may
appeal e.g. tour guide or receptionist. Do some further research on these jobs,
make sure you find out about:

 Other names for the job

 Related jobs
 The pay and the prospects
 How you can enter the job
 The employers, businesses and institutions which employs people in
this area
 Where the most jobs are situated
 What the working conditions are

Career pathways
From the information from your research select the one job that most appeals
to you. Taking into consideration all of the information that you have gathered
so far about yourself, and any other information, identify why you have chosen
one particular path over the other. You could do this by drawing up a table
where you list advantages and disadvantages.

How to make a career decision.

Setting goals
Now that you have a career pathway selected you need to think about how you could
follow this pathway. This is where goal setting comes into play. Goals give you a sense
of direction to channel your abilities, efforts, and resources. Great goals point you where
you want to go – they create an immediate focus.
By setting goals that clearly define 'where you are now' and 'where you need to be,' you
will have a clearer idea of what, specifically, you have to do. Knowing what you need to
do helps you to focus your efforts to get the desired results.

Studying
Begin your goal setting by researching how to begin on your career pathway. If you
think study is required explore local institutions and/or training providers to determine
where you can study that best meets your needs.

Things to find out:

 What the course or programme contains

 How long it takes to complete
 What the entry requirements are
 How much the fees are
 Can the programme be studied on-line, by distance, in class or a mixture?
 Is there any RPL (Recognition of Prior Learning) available.

Writing goals
Goals should be written down. By writing your goals down you can describe how the
results are to be obtained, how the results will be measured, and when the work will be
done. They should be SMART goals:

• SPECIFIC

What exactly do you want to accomplish? The expected outcome must be clear and
unambiguous.

What, when, and how much.

• MEASURABLE

Are you able to measure your progress? How will you assess the progress?

A sliding scale (1-10) | Hit or miss | Success or failure

• ACHIEVABLE

Is your goal within your reach given your current situation?

Is it realistic and attainable given your resources and time available? Does it stretch you
a bit, but not too much?

• RELEVANT
A relevant goal should help you towards your 'bigger' objectives. You want to create
goals that are in line with your purpose in life.

• TIME

What is the deadline for completing your goal? Is it a realistic time frame?

Does it have a starting point, an ending point, and a fixed duration?

Try using the following table to write down some of your goals and make sure they are
SMART.

For example:

S M A R T

Specific Measurable Achievable Relevant Time

I want to write a I will finish ten I will write one new I want to be a I will finish the
collection of short short stories. story per month. published short stories by
stories for children. author. May 2019.

Good goals and Bad goals

Specific goals

Bad example: I want to have an exhibition

Good example: I want to have an exhibition of my portrait photographs at the Space Gallery by the end
of 2020. I will aim to take one new image every month and will have 20 images for the exhibition.

Measurable goals
Bad example: I want to be rich.

Good example: I want to generate $100,000 in passive income within 5 years from this date.

Achievable goals

Bad example: I want to lose 15 kilos in 2 months.

Good example: I want to lose 15 kilos by Christmas 2010. I will do this by eating more fresh fruit and
vegetables and healthy food and work on losing a kilo a week.

Relevant goals

Bad example: Within one year, I want to become a witch and perform magic spells to make people do
what I want.

Good example: By the end of the year, I want to understand how we create our own realities by the
power of positive thinking. To do this I will find relevant books and look into relevant courses.

Time-bound goals

Bad example: I am going to do my homework.

Good example: I am going to finish my homework by 8pm tonight and I’ll achieve this deadline by
spending one hour on each subject.

Overcoming obstacles to your goals

Goals are rarely without obstacles. If they were easy to attain and without
obstacles, you would already be doing them, right? So how can you recognise
and overcome the obstacles and attain the goals you set for yourself?

The path around obstacles:

- Acknowledge obstacles exist

 Know that you will have tough times. Know that it won’t be easy. Know also that
despite the obstacles, you will reach your goals. You will get through, around, or
over the obstacles. They are there for a reason. Whether it is to teach you a bit
about yourself, to make you appreciate your success when you attain it, or to
 make you stronger – each and every obstacle you encounter has a positive side
to it.
- Be 100% responsible for yourself

 Being 100% responsible for yourself can seem overwhelming, but when you
accept responsibility for achieving your personal goals, you’ll experience an
incredible sense of empowerment. If you truly believe that everything in your
life is your creation, the good, the bad, and the ugly, then how could anything
stop you from reaching your goals?

- Educate yourself on likely obstacles

 Find out what obstacles you’re likely to encounter so you can be prepared for
them. When you’re prepared for them you can overcome them more easily.

 Research your goal; if you want to lose weight, what are common obstacles you
might encounter? For example, cutting back on sugar may cause some cravings
to surface. Cutting back on caffeine may cause temporary irritability, and taking
on a detox diet may cause temporary digestion issues.

- Plan how to overcome the obstacles

 Once you understand what potential obstacles you might face, you can plan
how you’re going to tackle them. For example, if you’re dealing with giving up
caffeine and you know you’re going to have headaches, you can plan a few days
off of work, grab a bottle of pain relievers, or brace yourself to power through
the headaches knowing the reward is on the other end.

Reviewing goals

Goals don’t have to be permanent, they are there to help give you a focus. If you think of them more as
intentions this will help you to regularly review your goals and adjust them to the changes and situations
in your life.

You don’t always need a plan to create a career. Instead, you need a plan to act on happenstance, to
transform unplanned events into career opportunities. By reviewing your goals regularly you will be
flexible enough to be able to take those unplanned opportunities instead of focusing on only one career
pathway.
Develop
Developing your action plan
Once you know what direction your career goal is in, you need to develop a career
action plan. A career action plan helps to clarify directions and decision making.

An effective career action plan contains:

 A clear idea of a career goal and a list of career objectives and how you are
going to achieve this
 A summary of your values, interests and influences
 A list of your current acquire skills and qualifications and any additional  skills you
still need to acquire
 Any personal development strategies planned
 Any other steps you need to do to make this plan happen
Example action plan
You can create your action plan any way you want.

Below is an example using lists and bullet points.

CAREER ACTION PLAN

Vet Nursing (end 2011)

I want to work as a Vet Nurse. In order to achieve this I need to complete the Certificate
in Vet Nursing, I can do this by the end of 2010.

To improve my chances of work, I could do the Diploma in Vet Nursing. I could have this
by the end of 2012.

I could have two years work experience by the end of 2011 if I look for part-time work
and/or work experience in a vet clinic.

I will visit StudyLink to discuss financial support by the end of next week.

My key skills are:

Excellent communication skills

Good computer skills

Empathy and patience

Excellent organizational skills & time management

Ability to pay attention to detail

I am interested in:

Reading

Movies

Animals

Pets

Travelling

Walking

My personal values are:

Having fun

Good work/life balance

Time for me and my family

Own home

Access to further education and training

My work values are:

Flexibility

Having control over what I do

Working in a good team

Travelling often

Helping others

Sense of achievement
My key areas of knowledge are in:

Bio science

German

Computing

Organization

English (communication)

My qualifications are in the area of:

Bio Science

English

German

All of these are really useful as a Vet Nurse.

I enjoy working with:

Animals and people of all ages from all walks of life.

I will talk to my family about my intentions.

An area I need to develop is managing stress. Therefore I will investigate

course/workshop/books/online information to help with this. If I can’t do this I will make
an appointment to see someone at Otago Polytechnic Student Success for some help
and support, or maybe I won’t be stressed now that I have a plan that interests me!

Show written action plan

A career action plan helps to clarify directions and decision making.

You may prefer to make a mind map to illustrate your action plan.
Career planning, setting goals and taking action are ongoing activities that need to be
reviewed and renewed regularly. Now on to the final step in the career plan....Deliver.

Deliver
Put the plan into action
The final step in the career plan is Deliver. Now you need to put your plan into
action and make it happen. Start the journey towards a career you will love.

References
Wireless Philosophy. Critical thinking - Fundamentals: Intrinsic vs. Instrumental
Value. Video retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=DR42xdsLWkc
Speak Up For Work. The Evolution of Work. Video retrieved
from https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=fM-
n0bpvBqM
 Jacob Morgan. The 5 Trends Shaping the Future of Work. Video retrieved
from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrhmHbDLM8o

Attributions
Hero image: Green grass. pixabay.com. Image retrieved
from: https://www.pexels.com/photo/nature-grass-plant-dew-53615/ Licensed under
a Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal license.

(1) Vintage war poster, Public Domain images. Image retrieved

from https://pixabay.com/en/poster-vintage-antique-war-316690/ Licensed under
a Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal license.

https://studentservices.op.ac.nz/career-counseling/career-planning-and-decision-making/