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Career Decision-Making & Action Plans
Making a career or work-related decision
Before making a career or work-related decision, individuals should take time to think about and consider the following questions:
Do I have appropriate information about my needs, personal profile and the occupational options I am considering?
What extra information and/or activities do I need to complete in order to make a decision?
The Career Self-Assessment and Career Exploration pages provide guidance and links to resources to help individuals in exploring these questions.
Once this information is collected it should be organized in a format that clearly helps identify and compare the career options, criteria and important factors to consider. The Occupational Choice Clarification tool provides a format to help in this process.
When faced with occupational, educational and employment decisions it is important for individuals to remember that satisfactory decisions cannot be made by someone else. It can be useful to get help or seek advice from other people, but the final decisions should be made by the individual themselves.
Developing a career action plan
Once a career decision is made, individuals need to develop an action plan to help them achieve success in reaching their career goals. They will need to develop a SMART Action Plan that includes:
Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-specific goals; and
Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-specific steps to achieving the goals.
Once a career action plan is developed:
Take action;
Evaluate the outcome of each step in the plan;
If a goal is achieved, move on to the next; and
If the goal is not achieved, develop more SMART goals and objectives.
Individuals should re-visit their career goals and plans throughout their working-life to ensure continued career success and development.
Additional Resources
For a more complete list of career resources, vist the Links for Job Seekers section.