Career development is defined as the process of management of learning, work, leisure, and transitions fordeveloping a future that is determined personally. The written list of short and long-term goals of the employees referring to their present and future jobs is known as a career development plan (Arguelles & Bay, 2014). It is a planned order of experiences both formal and informal in nature aimed to help the employees in the fulfilment of their goals. The goals should be connected to the strengths and potential of the employees.
Career development enables a person to plan and take appropriate decisions about their career, education and training choices for the achievement of their goals. It enables employees to manage their careers properly, which in turn gives the companies a chance to retain them for a longer period. A career development plan assists the employees to set expectations of career growth that are not impossible to achieve within a suggested time frame (Alias, Noor & Hassan, 2014). It identifies areas of weakness of the employees and suggests ways to work on them and improve. Career development plan helps employees to understand the relation between work and the role they wish work to play in their lives. In other words, career development plan is the method a person thinks about his career in order to establish himself.
I have discussed about my short and long term goals, my ambitions in life which include finishing my education, landing a job, attaining financial stability, investing in the stock market and starting my own business. I have also provided a personal SWOT analysis in which I have identified my strengths in communication, weaknesses in lack of decision making and analysis, opportunities in jobs in the communication sector and threats in the form of loss of jobs and projects at interviews. Furthermore, I have chosen four companies and analysed the challenges they are facing and how my profile would be beneficial to them in terms of employment. I have also stated methods to search for jobs as job search strategies.
Goals can be related to career and personal in nature (Zepeda, 2013). Setting of goal is a dynamic process to plan the ideal future of a person, and to motivate the person to achieve the targets to turn the vision into reality.
It is important to set goals because it gives an individual persisting vision and interim motivation to work on them. Goals focus on the process of acquisition of knowledge and organization of time, also known as time management and the resources of an individual to assist the person toattain stability.
Short-term goals are defined as the targets an individual aims to achieve in a short time. The time can range from a week to a year depending upon the depth and importance of the situation (Sirois & Pychyl, 2013). I have certain goals that I am planning to achieve shortly.
Long-term goals are defined as the targets aimed to be achieved in a longer time by an individual. Unlike short-term goals, long-term goals require adequate amount of planning and time to be achieved (Pathak et al., 2015). The time taken to attain these objectives is usually more than a year.
Personal SWOT analysis is the method used to evaluate the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats regarding an individual (Addams, & Allfred, 2013).
Strengths are defined as the advantages an individual has over others along with factors such as the personal resources one can access along with the achievements (Refer to Appendix 1). I have good communication skills, which assists me in getting the right messages to the right people. In addition, I am versatile in nature and am a team player, which enables me to adapt to the team conditions easily. Weaknesses include the areas the person does not feel confident to operate. In this regard, some of the weaknesses I possess include lack of decision-making abilities, and deficit to think analytically. I do not feel confident working in research related areas even though I am trying to work on my drawbacks. Opportunities are the elements in favour of the individual, of which he can take advantage. I have an avid knowledge about the introduction and working of new technology, which helps me to stay updated at all situations related to technology. My strength of good communication skills help me to seek opportunities in the corporate communication sector. Threats in personal analysis include the obstacles that a person faces at work. My weaknesses tend to hamper my performance and thus I can term them as threats. The lack of prompt decision-making skills have cost me jobs at interview sessions. It has also cost me missing on important projects to other colleagues of mine at the internship.
Conducting a personal SWOT analysis has helped me in knowing myself better. I have been able to know my strengths and weaknesses and working on them. These will definitely help me in improving my productivity and creating new opportunities for me in the future. I have gained a perspective of both my professional and personal life.
Career trends are the factors, which determine the direction the career of an `individual is heading towards in relation to the present job situation of the market. The evaluation of such trends is known as Career Trend Assessment.
The first company I have chosen for analysing the trend is Commonwealth Bank in Australia. This company is the leading provider of financial services such as retail banking, premium banking, business banking and funds management (Schlagwein, Thorogood, & Willcocks, 2014). The headquarters of the company is in Sydney and it has been expanding. Its business operations have expanded to nations such as New Zealand, Indonesia, China, India, The United States of America and the United Kingdom.
Commonwealth Bank not only provides banking solutions but also a variety of career options to the willing and eligible candidates. They offer internships in various departments including Analytics, Business and Private Banking, Corporate Affairs, Digital Banking, Financial Services, Global Markets, Human Resources, Institutional Banking and Markets, Legal sector, Marketing, Retail Banking Services, Risk Management and Technological sectors. Internship programmes are beneficial to the students from the perspective of them being able to get a first-hand work experience.
However, this company even though is immensely successful; it still faces challenges in certain sections. Firstly, they are facing a challenge in the transition that the industry is going through at present. Secondly, the revenue outlook of the market has become challenging as compared to the past. In addition, the introduction of new technology has brought disruptions to the bank in terms of cost. In addition, the Australian government has increased the scrutiny due to which they are facing the issue of an inquiry procedure. Lastly, the dividend growth remains subdued for the bank.
The second company taken into consideration is Pricewaterhouse Coopers Australia. This company is one of the biggest firms in the country and provide operational and financial solutions to organizations (“PwC Australia”, 2018). The company originated in Melbourne and later expanded to the rest of the world.
The company provides solutions to a wide range of organizations belonging to the industrial and the service sector. The company like several others have a wide range of career options for professionals as well as students. The career options range from analytics to technical sector to management. The students can also choose a career in the company in the form of graduate programmes, vacation programmes, trainee programmes and legal clerkship programmes. The sectors of work are mostly similar to that of the experienced workforce. The only difference being the trainees get to learn the work first-hand from a professional.
The challenges involving the companies include the concept of regulation and compliance of tax. This company works in a flexible economy where an average business spends 160-200 hours on tax compliance (Suthar et al., 2013). Big organizations like the one in consideration spend a hefty sum of money on compliance. Compliance in turn does not add value to the business for which it is called a challenge.
The third company into consideration is Telstra, which is a leading telecommunications and technology firm in Australia (Telstra.com.au, 2018). The headquarters are located at Melbourne and the company has expanded to twenty countries over the years.
The company is entirely based on technology and hence most of the career options offered by the company are related to the technical field. Although they do offer jobs in the management and sales sector. They also have opportunities for graduates and students in the form of internships.
However, Telstra is facing some challenges to sustain in the market due to some factors. The retail revenue of the company has witnessed a fall in the recent times. A sharp decline in the sales of the company has been considered as a challenge. The revenue from the mobile business of Telstra is falling which is again challenging for the firm.
Quantas Airways Limited is an airlines company based on Australia, which operates domestic and international flights across the globe (“About Qantas | Qantas”, 2018). The company has its headquarters in Mascot.
The prime focus being an airlines company is on airways related jobs such as pilot, ground operations, engineers and cabin crew. Other careers include brand marketing and corporate communications, customer service, digital and IT analytics and finance strategy and commercial planning.
The challenges faced by the company include natural disaster, which is one of the most common issues for the airline industry. In addition, increasing fuel price and industrial disputes are termed as challenges fort the organization.
All of the companies have a strong online presence, which has a strong database of accessible information. This is beneficial for people like us who want to start a career with organizations like them. I am planning approach these companies through their websites and sending them my Curriculum Vitae and Resume (Wallace et al., 2014) so that they can contact me based on my qualification. In addition, I have conducted all the necessary research required to succeed in the interview.
In my opinion, networking plays a major role in the strategy of searching a job. I prefer using social media as a tool of searching for a job. I prefer using social media since it expands my horizon to search for a job and with appropriate use of keywords, makes me visible to the target companies (Caliendo, Cobb-Clark & Uhlendorff, 2015). Personally, I recommend job-searching sites such as LinkedIn and Seek.com because even the higher management of companies are present here and there is a chance of being visible to them with the appropriate profile.
Building contacts by reaching out to friends, family, colleagues or any well-wisher helps in the process of searching for a job. I have been following the websites of the organizations and signed up to their newsletters to gain knowledge about their daily operations. This information will help me having a better knowledge of the organizations and in turn increase my chances of getting a job.
Recruiters often advertise for their requirements in various sources of media such as electronic, print, radio and even new media. I have been keeping an eye on such advertisements especially in the newspapers and willing to contact and send my Resume to the concerned offices once I find a vacancy suiting my profile. In addition, I have automated the search on the websites suiting my criteria so that I can be alerted at the correct time and avoid missing opportunities (Garibaldi, Moen & Sommervoll, 2016). Sometimes government websites related to education and jobs introduce good opportunities. Hence, I also keep a check on such websites regularly.
It is said that experience has more value than any other means in the process of recruitment. Therefore, experiential learning is regarded as one of the best strategies to search for and get a job (Helyer & Lee, 2014). I have interned with Pricewater Coopers Australia, which is a huge brand in the market and the certificate achieved from the internship holds great value in the process of recruitment. I am also looking forward to work part time with well-known organizations to apply the knowledge I have gained during my internship. I believe applying the knowledge from the internship will allow me to gain more experience and I will be equipped to work full time in the industry.
References:
About Qantas | Qantas. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.qantas.com/travel/airlines/about-qantas/global/en
Addams, L., & Allfred, A. T. (2013). The first step in proactively managing students’ careers: Teaching self-SWOT analysis. Academy of Educational Leadership Journal, 17(4), 43-51.
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Telstra.com.au. (2018). Telstra – mobile phones, prepaid phones, broadband, internet, home phones, business phones. [online] Available at: https://www.telstra.com.au/
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