WEEKLY LEARNING ACTIVITY SHEET

Solomon P. Lozada National high School

Personality Development
2nd Quarter – Week 6

Career Development

Learning Competencies:
1. Explain that understanding different factors, career development concept and personal life goals
influence career planning and decision making. (EsP-PD11/12PC-llf-12.1)
2. Identify career options based on different factors, career development concepts and personal life
goals. (EsP-PD11/12PC-llf-12.2)

Learning Objectives: At the end of the week, you will be able to:
1. Describe a successful person in your family member that may help in your decision making;
2. Illustrate the influence factors that affects your career future career through a diagram; and
3. Prepare a career plan based on your personal goal and different factors influencing career choices
through a reflection.

Key Concepts

A career can be defined as a person’s progress within an occupation. However, a career is more
than just a job, or working, or your occupation. It also includes your progress through life, your growth and
development in vocational and a vocational areas of life.
Deciding on your initial career may present a stressful and frightening prospect. Many tend to
perceive career decision-making as complex or even mysterious, only because they tend to concentrate on
the outcome and overlook the decision-making and planning process. Successful career decisions are
based on current and accurate information.
Career planning is an individual activity that occurs throughout a person’s working lifetime. In
American society, the career that you enter will influence your entire lifestyle, self-concept, income,
prestige, choice of friends and living location. Career planning is indeed a subcomponent of life planning. It
is influenced by many of the same factors, but it focuses attention on work tasks and work environments.

Career Concepts
A career is defined as the combination and sequence of roles played by a person during the course
of a lifetime (Super,1980). Your career basically dictates a lot of things in your life – it can determine the
kind of lifestyle that you will be leading, the quality of relationships that you have with people around you
like your family and friends, the kind of balance you will be able to keep with your life and your
responsibilities.

There are two other concepts that we often associate with the concept of career. One is a job. A job
is a position an individual hold doing specific duties. For example, if you would look closely at the job of a
lawyer, you can say that a lawyer’s job is working as an associate in X Law Firm.

Another term is occupation. An occupation is defined as the similar work for which people have
similar responsibilities and for which they develop a common set of skills and knowledge. For example,
people who are in the mental health occupation would include psychologists, clinical psychologists,
counselors, and psychiatrists.

A lot of things can influence one’s career choice. A popular career development model, the Trait
and Factor model, believes that skills and abilities need to fit the demands of a particular career field. This
being said, it is then important that you take stock of the skills, knowledge and abilities that you currently
possess and those that you still need to develop as these greatly impacts that kind of career that could be a
good match for you.

WHAT INFLUENCES YOUR CAREER CHOICE?

When we think about career choice, several things immediately come to mind - job description,
training and education required, career outlook, and salary - but there are a number of other factors that
may influence your decisions. Let's explore some of these factors as addressed by multiple career
development theories. Theories can help us frame why and how things happen. In this case, career
development theories help us explain why and how we choose to pursue specific career fields.
 There are a lot of theories to consider in the relatively new field of career development. As you read
through the factors below, you'll see that many of the related theories address some of the same issues. No
one theory explains everything, so it's good to consider these factors from multiple perspectives

Influence Factors

Skills and Abilities - Considering your skills and abilities and how they may fit a particular
occupation comes out of one of the earliest career development fields, Trait-Factor theories, and is still
used today. These theories recommend creating occupational profiles for specific jobs as well as identifying
individual differences, matching individuals to occupations based on these differences. You can identify
activities you enjoy and those in which you have a level of competency though a formal assessment.

Interest and Personality Type - Holland's Career Typology is a widely used to connect personality
types and career fields. This theory establishes a classification system that matches personality
characteristics and personal preferences to job characteristics. The Holland Codes are six
personality/career types that help describe a wide range of occupations.

Previous Experiences - Krumboltz's Social Learning and Planned Happenstance theories address
factors related to our experiences with others and in previous work situations. Having positive experiences
and role models working in specific careers may influence the set of careers we consider as options for
ourselves. One aspect of Social Cognitive Career Theory addresses the fact that we are likely to consider
continuing a particular task if we have had a positive experience doing it. In this way, we focus on areas in
which we have had proven success and achieved positive self-esteem.

Culture- Racial and ethnic background, as well as the culture of an individual's regional area, local
community, and extended family, may impact career decisions. Our culture often shapes our values and
expectations as they relate to many parts of our lives, including jobs and careers. Multicultural career
counseling has emerged as a specialized field to take these influences into consideration when counseling
clients and students. We can't attribute the predominant characteristics of a culture to any one of its
individuals, but having an awareness of the values and expectations of our culture may help us understand
how we make our career choices.

Gender - Both men and women have experienced career-related stereotypes. Gender is a factor
included in multiple career development theories and approaches including, Social Learning and
multicultural career counseling. How we view ourselves as individuals may influence both the opportunities
and barriers we perceive as we make career decisions. Studies of gender and career development are
ongoing as roles of men and women in the workforce, and in higher education, evolve.

Social and Economic Conditions - All of our career choices take place within the context of
society and the economy. Several career theories, such as Social Cognitive Career Theory and Social
Learning addresses this context in addition to other factors.

Exercises/ Activities
Activity 1: I want to be like my Idol
Directions: Cut and paste pictures of your family members or significant others to whom you have admired
because they are successful in their career. Post them inside the box and briefly describe each of them.
Activity 2: HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT YOUR RELATIONSHIPS?
Directions: Using the diagram below, write the factors that you think affects in choosing your future career
and write why did you choose them as influencer in your career decision making.

ME AND
MY
CAREER

Activity 3: Reflection
Directions: Write your own reflection about planning your career through answering the questions below.
Write it in a paragraph form.

What do I want to become? What do I have? How will I get there? Why do I have to be there? To whom will
I work for?

Rubric in Grading the Answer for Guide Questions

Criteria 5 4 3 2
Content is comprehensive, Content is
Content is less
accurate and ideas are comprehensive, Content is not
Content and comprehensive,
clearly stated and well accurate and ideas are comprehensive and
Organization accurate and ideas are
supported with details and clearly stated and well ideas are not clear.
clearly.
specific ideas. supported with details
Has committed one Has committed two- Has committed more
Grammar, punctuation and grammatical or three grammatical or than five grammatical
Mechanics
spelling used are correct punctuation or spelling punctuation or spelling or punctuation or
error error spelling error

References
Bezanson, Lynne & Hopkins, Sareena (2001) Lasting Fists Workshop Series: Becoming a Career
Development Ally for Your Teen (Facilitator Guide). Ottawa: Canadian Career
Development Foundation
People, Skills and Workplace Resources (2008) Career Coaching Your Teens: A Guide for Parents.
Edmonton: Alberta Employment and Immigration