Question

Personal Career Planning: Instructions

     1.    Complete the following activities

Activity 1: Strengths and Weaknesses Inventory Different occupations require special talents, abilities, and skills. Each of us, you included, has a repertoire of existing strengths and weaknesses that are “raw materials” we presently offer a potential employer. Actions can (and should!) be taken over time to further develop current strengths and to turn weaknesses into strengths. Make a list identifying your most important strengths and weaknesses in relation to the career direction you are likely to pursue upon graduation. Place a * next to each item you consider most important to focus on for continued personal development.

Activity 2: Five-Year Career Objectives Make a list of three career objectives that you hope to accomplish within five years of graduation. Be sure they are appropriate given your list of personal strengths and weaknesses.

Activity 3: Five-Year Career Action Plans Write a specific action plan for accomplishing each of the five objectives. State exactly what you will do, and by when, in order to meet each objective. If you will need special support or assistance, identify what it is and state how you will obtain it. An outside observer should be able to read your action plan for each objective and end up feeling confident that he or she knows exactly what you are going to do and why.

Answer 1

1. After completing the graduation, there are multiple career options where an individual can make a sincere effort in bagging some of the coveted jobs or positions with his or her sheer luck and efficient career planning.

Let’s assume, one individual is planning a career in the field of research and development (RND) in life science field, some of the important career traits which should be present in that individual are-

• Enthusiastic mind set∗
• Scientific aptitude∗
• Ability to understand the complex problems and breaking it into the simpler aspects∗
• Ability to work in team
• Discipline and focused approach
• Ability to read and write the scientific research papers∗

Here the career traits, which are absolutely must for a candidate to posses are been rated through star mark. If we conduct a SWOT analysis on that particular individual’s (consider me) career traits, then it could be classified as below, considering the above requirements to pursue the career in the field of RND in Life sciences.

Strengths-

Have the ability to delve deeper into the scientific understanding

• Having patience and hard working aptitude
• Having natural inclination towards life sciences phenomenon
• Good writing skills

Weakness-

• Lacking Independent working mind set
• Being too much introvert

Based on the above weakness, I will have to start thinking independently and should focus on thinking on the similar lines as other seniors would think on a particular problem. Being introvert will create obstacles for me, especially in attending the seminars and conferences, which should be overcome by me in due course of time.

2. In a five year career planning, I will be focusing more on independent thinking; Interacting with scientific people more often than not and honing my scientific skill sets on regular basis would be the key to my success and further career development.

3. In order to attain the five career objective, my focused efforts would be as below-

• Scientific aptitude- Reading more and more of scientific journals and discussing it with my colleagues and peers.
• Independent thinking- Trying and testing my own hypothesis, based on some scientific evidences or experiments in my lab.
• Interaction with scientific community- Interacting with scientific community on regular basis through the means of presenting the papers, attending the conferences and exchanging the ideas.
• Developing myself as a seasoned professional- It will be a eternal personality development process.
• Applying for a job which can sit my qualification- To pursue my career in more focused direction, I will keep applying for a better position where my contribution can be counted and rewarded in a fair manner.