Step One: Reaching a Decision-Making Point
A decision-making point is reached when you
feel ready or required to make an important career decision. How do you feel
about making this career decision? Take a moment now to write down your
Positive and Negative Emotions.
Were you able to put down any positive
emotions – like excited, curious, interested? Are you feeling only negative
emotions – like overwhelmed, confused, anxious? It’s okay to have some anxiety
when making this decision as it can be a positive motivator to taking action,
like working through the exercises in this workbook or taking a career planning
workshop. However, if the negative feelings are too high or debilitating, then
it may be time to see a career counsellor to help you deal with your emotions.
Step Two: Researching
Part One – Self
The career search has been called “both an
inside and an outside job.” The inside component is understanding yourself, or
self research. The process of researching yourself involves considering where
you want your occupation to fit into your lifestyle; determining which values,
skills, and interests you want to satisfy in your educational program or in
your future occupation; and assessing what your temperament or personality
style is like and how this will be expressed in your working role. Be aware
though, that not all of your personal dimensions can be expressed or satisfied
by your work. Some of your interests, skills, and so on will need to be
satisfied in other life roles. You will need to consider which parts of you
will be expressed in your educational program or at work and which parts of you
will be used in your leisure role, volunteer work, or with your family. Notice,
though, that there is a two-way arrow between your Career Criteria and your
Lifestyle Criteria, indicating that different dimensions can be switched
between your work role and your other life roles as you desire.
Part Two – Career
Once you have determined your career
criteria, then you can go shopping, so to speak. Go shopping to determine the
choices available in educational programs, occupations or employment positions,
depending on where you are in making a career decision. This will mean
generating a number of different alternatives. How many occupational titles do
you think you could give, right now? Think of all the occupations you know!
Most people could name between twenty-five to fifty titles. Since there are
over 25,000 different occupations out there you are probably not aware of a
number of opportunities that could be very suitable for you. After you generate
some possible options then you need to do some thorough research to make sure
you understand clearly what each of the options involves. Research can be done
in a variety of ways and while you are doing this research, you will probably
already start on the next step.
Step Three: Evaluating Alternatives & Making a Decision
At some point you will begin to compare the
options with the criteria that you have determined are necessary for making a
satisfying choice. You will be shown a strategy for evaluating alternatives,
which involves using both a rational, logical method and an intuitive,
subjective level of decision-making. After you have evaluated your options you
will be ready to make a decision. Your decision may be to review whether or not
you want to make this decision right now or to do more research if you are not
happy with one of your options.
If some of your options are suitable then
you may be ready to choose, but don’t choose just one option! In career
planning it is always important to have more than one choice – more than one
choice of an educational program, more than one choice of an occupational area,
and more than one choice of an employment offer. Why is it important to have
more than one choice - because of the uncertainty of the future. We can never
predict exactly what will be the demand for the educational program that you
wish to enroll in or how the job market will be when you graduate. So you need
a back up plan, just in case things don’t work out, or if, in time, you find
that you don’t like your first choice as much as you had thought you would,
then you have a second choice to consider. Try to have three or four
alternatives at each decision-making point.
Step Four: Taking Action
In this step, action is taken by
implementing one of your choices; however, no decision is without risk or some
element of the unknown. This is a time to test out your choice to see if it
meets up with your expectations. If not, then you can always go to your
contingency plan.
It can be helpful during this phase to
develop an Action Plan with goals and a timeline, so that you can monitor your
progress and be clear on the steps to take. You could anticipate some obstacles
or roadblocks that may develop and find ways to deal with these if they do
arise. Also, it can be helpful to consider the resources and support that you
will have to call upon while carrying out your action plan.
Step Five: Reviewing the Decision
Remember that your decision has not been
written in stone, it can be changed and altered as is necessary. Periodically
it is good to step back and review whether or not you feel that the choice you
made is still the best one for you. This could be done after six months into a
new educational program or after six months on a new job. You may have new
information or because of your experiences, you may have a different
perspective. You do have options and alternatives.
© Sharon D. Crozier, 2001
#calonsimpananmahuposting
2014
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