Steps to Action Planning

The Seven Steps to Action Planning

This is an essential part of career planning as it provides you with the means of recording and assessing your own career development. Regularly setting and reviewing short, medium and long-term goals enables you to be in a stronger position to develop your career on your terms – nobody else’s.

The seven steps to action planning outlined below, are designed to help you develop this kind of approach and put it to work.

1. Identify and clearly define your goal.

For example, this might be:

Short-term – to obtain a 2:1 in your degree.

Medium-Term – to apply for a postgraduate IT conversion course.

Long-term – to secure a job as an IT systems analyst.

S - specific

M - measurable

A - achievable

R - realistic

T - time bound

2. Brainstorm the activities and tasks you must undertake to achieve the goal.

Prioritise them and set a date for completion of each task. You may want to set daily, weekly, monthly or yearly targets.

3. Break down your goals into smaller tasks.

Achieving your goals will seem less daunting this way. For example, if you are interested in researching opportunities in personnel or marketing you might aim to:

• Read relevant occupational information e.g. professional careers websites.
• Contact CIPD and CIM (professional bodies) and read the careers section of their websites.
• Attend an employer fair and discuss these roles with employers on the stands.

4. Identify obstacles and difficulties from the start and plan ways to overcome them.

Write down the barriers you feel are stopping you making progress e.g. time constraints, pressures of work, distractions, unsure about how to write a persuasive CV, having difficulty finding relevant information, confused by conflicting information.

5. Find useful resources and opportunities.

6. Develop positive thinking.

7. Take personal responsibility and take action.

Reflect on what you are doing. Banish the destructive habits of making excuses and poor planning and ‘never getting around to it’. Keep a record of what you have done and store it where you can find it. Decide when you are going to review it and note it in your diary. Start your record by completing the Personal Profile and Action Plan below.

• Your Personal Profile and Career Action Plan

By now you will have undertaken a variety of different activities to help you gather information about yourself, i.e. your skills, interests, motivations and personal preferences. You should have some ideas about what you need to do next to help you decide about your career. These could be:

• Explore in more depth, areas of work you may be interested in and are suited to.
• Revisit your skills analysis to plan improvements in some key areas.
• Make job applications or applications for work experience.

Action planning is a key career management skill. Working out where you want to be and the steps you need to take to get there can be applied to short, medium and long term goals.

• Explore what is out there

Use this section to generate more career ideas and to research the career options you are already considering. Decide what you need to know and then use the resources listed for your research. Remember to judge the reliability of each resource you use.

• The key skills needed to be successful in that job
• What people do in the job on a daily basis
• What qualifications are needed
• Is further training required
• The state of market for that industry - labour market information
• Competition and availability of jobs
• Salaries and lifestyle implications

• How up to date is it? If it is more than 2 years old – it could be very out of date
• Is it biased? Is the material written by marketers, or give just one view of the career?
• Does information from different sources conflict? If so, you need to delve for more sources or network to find out more from personal contacts.

Identify a career path relevant to your occupation and self-assessment.  Provide a graphical representation of the career path.