Career planning process
Planning your career
Good career management skills can help you to make informed decisions. Follow this four-step process at any time during your career, whether it be for deciding whether to accept ‘Project A’ or ‘Project B’ in your current job, or about starting or changing careers.
Self-awareness
Self-awareness involves thinking about and reflecting on your current situation and what makes you who you are, such as your interests, personality characteristics, values, and skills. The following activities may be helpful in identifying your interests, values and skills.
- Complete a free online interest quiz from Job Outlook. Note: the results will be very general, so you may wish to see a Careers Consultant to assist interpret the results.
- Download the Your Career and You: Self Assessment for Students and Graduates booklet which is produced by Graduate Careers Australia. This has some actvities to assist you identify your goals, interests, values and skills.
Opportunity-awareness
This part of the process is all about gathering, organising, and analysing information to determine possible options open for you. Here are some websites you can visit to research opportunities.
- Career information booklets
- What can I do with a degree in ...?
- Graduate salaries
- Job Outlook
- Graduate Opportunities
- Unimail (for current graduate and vacation employment opportunities
- CareerHub
- Industry Associations and Contacts
- LinkedIn - use the advance search to see what jobs people with your qualifications have held
Decision making
The decision-making step of the career planning process is about collating the available information about yourself and your opportunities, and choosing the best option. A really simple way to help make a decision is to list all the options on a piece of paper, and write down all the positive and negative reasons for taking that option. The option with the most positives is the one to accept.
Taking action
This stage is literally about following through with what you’ve decided on doing. You may want to create an action plan, with activities and deadlines to complete them by.
