Career Information Isn’t Enough
Planning your future career is tough.
You need to be taken into account personal factors (eg interests, abilities, potential, values, etc), the ever changing world of work, education and training, credible decision-making models: all these and more. Just jumping into something you stumbled across is not likely to be optimal.
Strange, but some people think all you need is information. Especially for young people who are experiencing career planning uncertainty, more information typically means more confusion.
Yet we still hear the advice: “Can’t decide? OK here’s more information!”. That’s just not helpful!
Most young people (and many older citizens too) know the leisure activities they like (and dislike). Watching movies, sport, socialising with friends generally rate highly. The problem is that career seekers typically don’t know how leisure activities connect with the world of work.
What else is needed? Here are five factors we recommend for effective career planning.
Good career planning for you enables
- Self-discovery
Consider your occupational interests (the interests you have that would be satisfied in a suitable job), your values, preferences, strengths and weaknesses.
- Knowledge about the world of work including opportunities (both current & emerging), job demands, recruitment & selection, helpful workforce resources.
- Guided exploration of information relevantto your individual circumstances
It is important that you are provided with advice tailored to your interests, values, strengths and weaknesses, rather than being bombarded with more general information.
- Reliable decision-making model
This will bring together personal factors which are important to you, with suitable & realistic plans & opportunities.
- Action planning
Once you have established long term career goals, your Action Plan will be your roadmap for how to get to your goals. But remember you’ll need to keep working at this.
Additionally, and most importantly, systems and software promoting career development need to be underpinned by credible research. Research data including reliability and validity needs to be publicly available for users, for career practitioners and for other researchers. (See also Research for Career Practitioners.)
The JIIG-CAL Australia Career ePortal has been developed and tailored to provide reliable and relevant resources and tools for career planning. We review and update our software regularly to ensure it remains up-to-date in this changing world of work.
The software is based on comprehensive research completed internationally and includes algorithms that generate accurate personal profiles and career suggestions.
Discover JIIG-CAL’s Career ePortal. Book a free demo today.
Bob Bredemeyer
Managing Director
JIIG-CAL Australia