Evaluating Career Choices and Personal Development Strategies

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Homework Assignment
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This assignment delves into personal and professional development, guiding the student through evaluating career choices, identifying strengths and weaknesses using a SWOT analysis, and setting SMART objectives. The student explores three career alternatives: travel blogger, freelancer, and startup, ultimately prioritizing the startup option. The assignment then analyzes the student's current reality, highlighting strengths like a positive view and visionary mindset, and weaknesses such as limited technical knowledge and impatience. It further addresses skill gaps and proposes strategies for progression, including improving problem-solving skills, negotiation, and communication. The student also emphasizes the importance of building networks and modifying leadership techniques. Finally, the assignment concludes with the application of the SMART framework to define specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-based goals for professional growth and development.
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Personal development for profession
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Table of content
Part 1..........................................................................................................................................3
Evaluate any three alternatives of career choices, and choose your preferred one. Describe the
specific purpose for your choice................................................................................................3
Part 2: Current Reality...............................................................................................................3
Part 3: Options for Progression..................................................................................................5
PART 4: SMART Objective......................................................................................................7
REFERENCES...........................................................................................................................8
Books and Journal..................................................................................................................8
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Part 1
Evaluate any three alternatives of career choices, and choose your preferred one.
Describe the specific purpose for your choice.
Career Goal
A career goal is something that takes our life to the point where we want to see it. Choosing a
right career goal is necessary to analyze where we would be standing in future. It’s not only
about financial stability but also an aspect of our dreams and the work that we would love to
do. My three best choices for a well established career goal would be as followed-
Start up
Travel blogger
Freelancer
Travel Blogger
Being a travel blogger would be in my career plan as it can take me to new places introducing
new cultures and help me meet new people. What can be more amazing than earning by
travelling and writing about it. A travel blogger writes about the wonderful and unique
experiences he gets while being at random places (Cullingford, 2017).
Freelancer
Working as a freelancer is like doing jobs of personal interest with complete freedom from so
called office timings and working in day & night shifts.
Start up
I would choose start up as my first priority as it would be about an idea that puts me high.
Rather than working and contributing in some other person’s company I would better like to
invest my efforts and energy in my own dream that leads me to a good position and provides
me financial stability. Another reason for choosing start up as a career goal is that it provides
complete freedom of making decisions by own for the work we do. Work seems to be quite
interesting and not a burden to hold. The growth does not have to wait for a promotion nor
does it require a motivation in terms of salary increment or rewards.
Part 2: Current Reality
Identify and explain your strengths (skills, experience and personal qualities) and
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Weaknesses, using the Personal SWOT completed in class, and feedback from 5
Contacts using the “Ask 5 People” exercise.
Using the source of personal SWOT analysis accomplished in class and having reviews
through “Ask 5 People” exercise, here is a brief view about identifying my own strengths &
weaknesses -
Talking about my top strengths that give me advantages &help me grow are as followed-
Strengths
Positive view
Visionary mindset
Interest in learning
Technical knowledge
Positive view-
Having a positive view about life is one of the strengths that hold me from getting
down in any situation (Pennington and Richards, 2016). Every situation that comes in our life
has both sides of good and bad. Things cannot always happen as they way we want them to
be but accepting the reality brings us closer to a satisfactory.
Visionary mindset -
I believe in looking for the best possibilities that an incidence can bring for us. Even a
pandemic can become an opportunity for somebody. With my experience in professional life,
I can surely assess that the failures have been always a ladder to my growth as they have
forced me to do better. Putting more into our work when it’s not approaching desired results
helps us modify things in a stronger way.
Interest in learning-
Interest in learning has also been my strength to achieve more. It’s truly said “the more you
learn, the more you earn”. I like to learn new skills whether it’s about some technical work or
management.
Technical knowledge -
Being good into technical work has helped me to perform various tasks of my work rather
than depending upon somebody else.
Weaknesses-
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Limited knowledge of technical tools
Impatience
Difficulty in convincing unsatisfied customers
Limited knowledge of technical tools
It’s more important to be familiar with changing technology and being able to explore
complicated features that I need to be. Having basic knowledge about technical business tools
is good for a certain period of time only later on the need of learning into deep is essential to
acquire multiple objects and prevent unwanted losses (Rønnestad, Orlinsky and Wiseman,
2016).
Impatience
My weakness is being eager and impatient about the tasks assigned to me, which often leads
me in trouble.
Difficulty in convincing unsatisfied customers
This is something I feel really tough to handle but want to be better with it as unsatisfied
customers are the ones who introduce us with what we need to work on to make our business
services more productive. I would consider this fact as an important matter of weakness to
eliminate as much as possible.
Part 3: Options for Progression
Identify and explain any gaps in your skills, experience or knowledge that you would
need to address to successfully achieve your career goal.
Identify and explain options that might help you bridge the gap between your
Current situation and your career aspirations.
You may include making the most of opportunities and managing threats to your
Progression (from your Personal SWOT), engaging your current network, and putting
a plan in place to develop it. Consider how you might use the professional profile you
developed in class
I have noticed some major gaps in my skills & work potential that I would prefer to address
to better attain my career objectives. This are-
Lack of professionalism
Being quite much friendly with subordinates sometimes acts as less outcomes of desired
results. As they do not take the responsibility completely due to lack of professionalism.
Less social with new people
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I sometimes feel hard to treat new people in a friendly way that leads to less interaction.
Being into a business or profession requires the individual to have friendly behaviour to win
their trust and develop public relations (Lindsay, 2016)
Less effective in delivery high level customer service
I often realise the fact of being less effective in serving those high level aspects that some
consumers are expecting.
Alternatives that might be helpful in bridging the gap between my current situation and career
expectation-
Problem solving skills and conflict management
By analysing my SWOT, I can consider the auspicious importance of how problem solving
skills and managing the small conflicts at work can help me do amazing work.
Being better at art of negotiation
The reason of losing many leads is not being able to convince the customers for the offered
price. Learning art of negotiation and mastering into it can surely help me do better.
Modifying leadership techniques
I would like to learn more about leadership traits and how to implement them efficiently to
get desired results through team work.
Building networks
A good network appears as a solution for almost problems as we might know individuals who
are experts in their field. I would prefer to improve relations with more people who are
genuine and work oriented.
Improving communication skills
I would like to have some personality grooming sessions and learn more about mastering
at public speaking. Being a better communicator will not only help in having interaction with
more people but can also support in winning customers’ trust (Hancock and Walsh, 2016).
Planning and objective decisions
I will focus more on planning and managing the available resources in more effective way to
get improved outcomes. Through approaching the professional profile that I have built in the
class, I would like to develop a team of passionate workers who can be my classmates too.
I would also try my level best to convince my contacts to share my work with their known
persons to let them know about my business services.
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PART 4: SMART Objective
It’s important to set objectives, goals for yourself. We just have to set a much more
achievable goal. The establishment of all objectives should be created using the S.M.A.R.T.
philosophy. S.M.A.R.T. is an acronym that is used to guide the development of measurable
goals Cruess, Cruses and Steinert, 2016). Each objective should be:
S specific
Be specific in setting goals! There’s no point in setting a generic goal. Specific
answers the questions "what is to be done?" "How will you know it is done?" and describes
the end product of the work to be done. The description is written in such a way that anyone
reading the objective will interpret it the same way.
M measureable
Measurable answers the question "how will you know it meets expectations?" and
defines the objective using terms (quantity, quality, costs, frequency, deadlines, etc.). It
refers to the extent to which something can be evaluated against some standard. . Being a
measurable goal allows you to identify when exactly it has been reached, i.e. what you desire
as the end result.
A achievable
Setting a reasonable target is important! The objective should be set up in such a way
that it should not be too low or too high. If you set your target too high it can cause stress
Likewise if a target was too easy will stop you from pushing yourself and doing more.
R realistic
The target setup should not be too ambitious. All successful people don’t just become
successful overnight thus objectives taken should be relevant and realistic.
T time based
There should be a Deadlines for the objectives taken .if you set up a deadline for
yourself for the objective to be completed within a specific deadline…’ then you motivates
yourself to complete a job by an allotted time.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journal
Cullingford, C., 2017. 13 Institutional Development and Professional Needs: Some
Reflections. Professional development and institutional needs, p.223.
Pennington, M.C. and Richards, J.C., 2016. Teacher identity in language teaching:
Integrating personal, contextual, and professional factors. RELC journal, 47(1), pp.5-23.
Rønnestad, M.H., Orlinsky, D.E. and Wiseman, H., 2016. Professional development and
personal therapy.
Lindsay, H., 2016. More than ‘continuing professional development’: a proposed new
learning framework for professional accountants. Accounting education, 25(1), pp.1-13.
Hancock, S. and Walsh, E., 2016. Beyond knowledge and skills: rethinking the development
of professional identity during the STEM doctorate. Studies in Higher Education, 41(1),
pp.37-50.
Cruess, R.L., Cruess, S.R. and Steinert, Y. eds., 2016. Teaching medical professionalism:
supporting the development of a professional identity. Cambridge University Press.
Hodge, A., 2016. The value of coaching supervision as a development process: Contribution
to continued professional and personal wellbeing for executive coaches. International
Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring, 14(2), p.87.
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APPENDIX
Strengths
Positive view
Visionary mindset
Interest in learning
Technical knowledge
Positive view-
Having a positive view about life is one of the strengths that hold me from getting
down in any situation (Pennington and Richards, 2016). Every situation that comes in our life
has both sides of good and bad. Things cannot always happen as they way we want them to
be but accepting the reality brings us closer to a satisfactory.
Visionary mindset -
I believe in looking for the best possibilities that an incidence can bring for us. Even a
pandemic can become an opportunity for somebody. With my experience in professional life,
I can surely assess that the failures have been always a ladder to my growth as they have
forced me to do better. Putting more into our work when it’s not approaching desired results
helps us modify things in a stronger way.
Interest in learning-
Interest in learning has also been my strength to achieve more. It’s truly said “the more you
learn, the more you earn”. I like to learn new skills whether it’s about some technical work or
management.
Technical knowledge -
Being good into technical work has helped me to perform various tasks of my work rather
than depending upon somebody else.
Weaknesses- Limited knowledge of technical tools
Impatience
Difficulty in convincing unsatisfied customers
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Limited knowledge of technical tools
It’s more important to be familiar with changing technology and being able to explore
complicated features that I need to be. Having basic knowledge about technical business tools
is good for a certain period of time only later on the need of learning into deep is essential to
acquire multiple objects and prevent unwanted losses (Rønnestad, Orlinsky and Wiseman,
2016).
Impatience
My weakness is being eager and impatient about the tasks assigned to me, which often leads
me in trouble.
Difficulty in convincing unsatisfied customers
This is something I feel really tough to handle but want to be better with it as unsatisfied
customers are the ones who introduce us with what we need to work on to make our business
services more productive. I would consider this fact as an important matter of weakness to
eliminate as much as possible.
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