WEST CENTRAL COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCE INC.

Career Preparation
Module 2: Importance of Career Planning
Learning Objectives:

At the end of this module, you expected to:

1. understand the importance of Career Planning

Activity 1:

MARK (√) YOUR ANSWERS BASED ON HOW WELL EACH STATEMENT DESCRIBES YOU.

ACCURATE NEUTRAL INACCURATE

I try not to draw attention to myself _____ _____ _____

I feel uncomfortable when I disagree with someone _____ _____ _____

I lose my belongings _____ _____ _____

I have a vivid imagination _____ _____ _____

I would enjoy attending a large party in my honor _____ _____ _____

I dislike being in competition with others _____ _____ _____

I prefer to follow a schedule _____ _____ _____

I question the wisdom of my elders _____ _____ _____

I enjoy being the center of attention _____ _____ _____

I try to avoid conflict _____ _____ _____

I make sure my work is finished on time _____ _____ _____

It is important to me to follow traditions _____ _____ _____

I make an effort to be popular _____ _____ _____

I sympathize with the homeless _____ _____ _____

I have trouble controlling my impulses _____ _____ _____

I think about why people do the things they do _____ _____ _____

Being around lots of people energizes me _____ _____ _____

I am helpful to the people around me _____ _____ _____

I am ambitious _____ _____ _____

I like to do things as they were done in the past _____ _____ _____

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WEST CENTRAL COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCE INC.

Importance of Career Planning

A few years ago, a degree would help an individual get a high-profile job. However, nowadays
this is less likely due to a greater transparency in recruitment procedures.

Competitions and challenges are a part of today's world; therefore, to achieve our goals, we
should plan our careers well, rather than aimlessly change jobs all the time. There are many
individuals who are clueless about their pursuits after graduation, as they do not plan ahead. Finally,
they end up earning little and feeling dissatisfied.

Why Career Planning

Planning your career basically starts after the secondary level of education. After a certain level
of education, we have to decide on our careers, to be able to pursue higher education that will help us
to secure good job opportunities.

1) Career planning helps to pave a secure path.

For example, if a person wants to become a banker, they have to possess a Bachelor's degree in
finance. Career Preplanning can help us achieve our educational targets effectively and also helps us
to evaluate our personality. In short, career planning is necessary to guide us towards a proper and
safer future.

2) Don’t be Lost

Without proper career planning , we may find ourselves lost. It will also be difficult to find the
job we want in the future. Career planning motivates and drives us to accomplish the task.

3) Achieve goals and dreams.

Competitions and challenges are a part of today's world; therefore, to achieve our goals, we
should plan our careers well, rather than aimlessly change jobs all the time.

Furthermore, as time passes by, we grow and our needs change. Therefore, to keep pace with
the future, we need to plan well ahead. Career planning helps us to make many adjustments along the
way as we keep learning throughout our lives. Successful people are those who have adopted proper
career planning.

4) The Multi-Skill and Multi-Tasking Trend

The focus today is on acquiring multiple skills and cross functionality, and not on specialization. With
proper career planning, we can avoid dead end jobs. Career planning helps us to focus on our positive
and negative traits.

Mentors play a pivotal role in career planning.

Career planning is an important aspect of our lives, but we should not put too much pressure
on ourselves, as that would probably discourage us from making any real, profitable choices. It is best
to find a mentor that can help you with your career planning.

In short, career planning can help you to realize your intentions and dreams. Especially if you
want to have a stable future, proper career planning is the key to success.

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WEST CENTRAL COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCE INC.

Career Planning

Career planning is a subset of career management. Career planning applies the concepts of
Strategic planning and Marketing to taking charge of one's professional future. Career is an ongoing
process and so it needs to be assessed on continuous basis. This process of re-assessing individual
learning and development over a period of time is called Career Planning. It consists of 4 steps that
are essential for proper and complete planning.

Goals or objectives development

The career management process begins with setting goals/objectives. A relatively specific
goal/objective must be formulated. This task may be quite difficult when the individual lacks
knowledge of career opportunities and/or is not fully aware of their talents and abilities. However, the
entire career management process is based on the establishment of defined goals/objectives whether
specific or general in nature. Utilizing career assessments may be a critical step in identifying
opportunities and career paths that most resonate with someone. Career assessments can range from
quick and informal to more in depth. Regardless of the ones you use, you will need to evaluate them.
Most assessments found today for free (although good) do not offer an in-depth evaluation.

The time horizon for the achievement of the selected goals or objectives - short term, medium term
or long term - will have a major influence on their formulation.

Short term goals (one or two years) are usually specific and limited in scope. Short term goals are
easier to formulate. Make sure they are achievable and relate to your longer term career goals.

Intermediate goals (3 to 20 years) tend to be less specific and more open ended than short term
goals. Both intermediate and long-term goals are more difficult to formulate than short term goals
because there are so many unknowns about the future.

Long term goals (Over 20 years), of course, are the most fluid of all. Lack of life experience and
knowledge about potential opportunities and pitfalls make the formulation of long term
goals/objectives very difficult. Long range goals/objectives, however, may be easily modified as
additional information is received without a great loss of career efforts because of
experience/knowledge transfer from one career to another.

Making career choices and decisions - the traditional focus of careers interventions. The
changed nature of work means that individuals may now have to revisit this process more frequently
now and in the future, more than in the past.

Managing the organizational career - concerns the career management tasks of individuals
within the workplace, such as decision-making, life-stage transitions, dealing with stress etc.

Managing 'boundaryless' careers - refers to skills needed by workers whose employment is

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Taking control of one's personal development - as employers take less responsibility,

Process of Career Planning

The process of career planning is also known as career development stages and career
development model. These steps help you in planning your career and deciding about your future.

Self Assessment

Self-assessment is a process that helps you in assessing your skills, your potential, your
strengths, and your ability to fulfill your aims. As the name of the step suggest, you self asses yourself
and then based on your analyses and keeping your strengths and weaknesses in mind you draft your
future plan. By drafting your future plan, we mean that executing this step helps you to finalize the
profession and career path you want to choose. Make sure that you choose and finalize more than one
career, keep one or two careers in case you decide to roll back. In case the career you chose does not
satisfies you or later in time you come to know that this was not meant for you then in that case you
must have a backup plan.

Self Development

Once you have self analyzed yourself the second step that await your attention is to fill the
loopholes you have identified in the above step. By this we mean that in this step you have to see that
what are the qualities and skills that are required by you to help you achieve your aims and goals. For
instance, you might decide that you need training or a particular course in a field in order to make you
perfect for the profession you have chosen.

Come up with Action Form

Once you have researched the feasibility of the factors that you have finalized in above steps,
the next step is to show some action and translate your plans on a piece of page. This step requires
you to make plan as in how you are going to achieve and fulfill the steps you have decided above. The
best way to come with an action plan is to come up with small goals for oneself. Once these small
goals are achieved, we can see that how much close we are to our main aim and major goal. This small
step acts as a pathway to the main aim.

Action

Once you are done with small goals and the main aim, the next step remains to start
implementing your plans. Keep a very close track of your activities to make sure that you are on the
right track and that by following this path you are surely going to achieve you goal!

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WEST CENTRAL COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCE INC.

Activity 2: Self-assessment

List down at least three (3) careers which you think are favorable in your case and that of
your skills.

1. ______________________
2. ______________________
3. ______________________

Assessment:

Once you have list down the careers that are favorable in your case and the skills and
improvements that are required by you in order to achieve excellence the third step requires you to do
an intensive research and see that what that are findings related to career options and the skills that
are required to make you champion in that. Choose one career to profound in your research. Your
research will be looking into following questions:

1. What is the scope of the career you have chosen?

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2. Will that career pay you off in the future?

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3. Is there a room for expansion in that career field?

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Sources:
Importance of Career Planning | K12 Academicshttps://www.k12academics.com › importance-career-plan...

The Importance of Career Planning - Street Directoryhttps://www.streetdirectory.com

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