Career Mapping
Ahoy mattie! Personalized treasure map to a bountiful career!
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if your job search was just like a treasure hunt and "X
marked the spot" on your career map and led straight to the treasure chest? Let’s
face it; the jobs are not going to find you. Why not design your own map with a
clear path leading directly to your dream job? Now that you have the tools to guide
you along the adventure, you will need these key strategies to help navigate the
journey.
There is one important question to answer before moving forward…
What do you want to accomplish in the future? One Year…, Five Years…, Ten Years…
- Career planning: What exactly do you want to do? Find out more about the
kind of training, education, and skills you will need to achieve your career goal.
- Research professions: Discover what it takes to be successful at the jobs
you are interested in. What are the educational requirements, salaries, and working
conditions at the fields you are interested in? Explore where companies want to
take their business in the near future and anything else that is important to you
on your career path.
- Marketing plan: Focus! Decide which aspects of your profession are most appealing
to you and create a plan to market your knowledge, skills and experience to get
the position you want.
- Skills and interests: What do you enjoy to do? What kind of personality do
you have? What are you good at? What values and morals do you hold? After you have
contemplated these questions; ask your shipmates to give their input. Discovering
your strengths and weaknesses is essential to understanding how you will benefit a
company.
- Self Assessment Exercise: Develop a list of different
skill sets; find these items by reading the qualification section of job descriptions
in careers that interest you. After a list is created, check off each item as a
strength or weakness. If you have marked an item as a weakness than you must construct
a practical plan for addressing this weakness in an interview
- Evaluation time: How does your skills/interests match the occupations you've
selected? The career that compliments your skills, interests, and personality the
closest may be the career for you.
- Positioning statement: Here is an important piece of the job search puzzle;
it is a chance to put in writing who you are and how it relates to the industry
or company you are currently in. This does not have to be longer than a paragraph
and should include how you would position yourself going forward with your career.
This should lay out your capabilities to create a clearly defined professional identity
- Ready, set, action: Now that you have identified what it is you want to do
in the next year or two, all that is left is to develop a course of action to execute
this plan. It does take some work and may include speaking to experts in your industry
and mirroring people who are already successful doing what you intend to do.
- Financial plan: Understanding that a change in career direction may have
an impact on your finances is key to developing a successful map. Determine up-front
what could happen; good or not so good, and have a plan to deal with it.
- Time out to review: When and how often should you stop along your journey?
Where are you on your map? Are there any weather patterns or road conditions to
pay attention to? If you are new to mapping, we suggest that you do it once a
week. When you are more comfortable with the process, once a month is probably often
enough to take a look at the progress you are making.
Times they are a changing and in today's job market it is happening so rapidly that
the people who will excel are those who have clearly defined where they are going and how
they are going to get there. We have given you real-life strategies, if followed
closely they will put you out ahead in the career race!