Career planning
Put simply, career planning is the process of organising your career ideas to make them achievable. To be effective, a career plan needs to involve a number of steps; it does not matter where you start in the process, so long as you consider all the steps along the way.
What do you need to consider when making your career plan?
There are four key steps to think about:
- Thinking about me – involves thinking about what you want out of a job and what you have to offer. For help with this visit What jobs would suit me? and Identifying your skills sections.
- Researching my options – involves thinking about the options that are open to you and understanding how and where to research opportunities. For help with this, visit the Jobs and Work experience section for advice on searching for vacancies.
- Making plans – involves thinking through possible options and making an action plan to help achieve your goals. For help with this visit Planning the action you need to take.
- Taking action – involves reflecting on your skills, knowledge and experience and putting your plans into action by presenting yourself effectively on paper and in person. For help with this visit the CVs and Interviews section.
Taking this approach to your career planning will help you whenever you want to evaluate your career goals. To make a start you can use the information and advice on these pages by choosing from the left-hand menu.
For some people, talking through their ideas and thoughts about career planning can be really helpful and you can do this by making an appointment to see a careers adviser.
