Assignment: Career Plan INFOGRAPHIC
Why Plan?
Building your career is a lifelong journey. Like all journeys you have a better chance of success if you have a plan. Plans change and your future career path will have many detours and side trips but hopefully no dead ends!
Planning your career will give you a sense of direction, a self-check as to whether you are achieving the goals you have set, and the opportunity to recognize where things may be going wrong. It also allows you to have a tool that will help you in making future decisions when choices arise.
Career planning is the continuous process of thinking about your interests, values, skills and preferences, exploring the life, work and learning options available to you and ensuring that your work fits with your personal circumstances.
In order to really succeed, you need to take charge of your career, and to take ownership for shaping it and ensure that it is moving in the direction you want it to go. In order to achieve this takes planning, and may include the following from Careerminder.com:
· Plan forward. Put on paper where you see yourself going in your career, and plot each step that you will need to reach, in order to get there.
· Self-assessment. Routinely assess your skills, your potential, your strengths and weaknesses and your ability to fulfil your aims.
· Self-development. Once you have assessed yourself, always ensure that you pay attention to any gaps that you may have identified in your self-assessment, and ensure you come up with an action to correct and fill these gaps and keep you moving forward.
· Work on getting the right experience. Try to gain as much experience as possible in your job, take on additional projects and work if possible, in order to be able to gain new experience.
· Make yourself indispensable. Remember that in the work place that all moves and promotions are based on high levels of competencies and job performances. You need to be the best you can possibly be, to ensure that you are not overlooked for promotions and future roles.
· Networking is critical. Really work on your networking skills and ensure that the networks that you create are relevant to your job choices and career aspirations. Networking is not just about making contacts, it’s about making the right contacts and getting to known and earning the respect of those that may be able to assist in your career aspirations.
· Find a mentor. If possible and your company offers this facility, find a mentor. A mentor can help you in obtaining essential knowledge and information that will enable you to quickly learn what is required in your job, and help you succeed. A mentorship program forms important relationships with those that can help in your career progression.
· Education and Training. Keeping up to date with training is essential particularly in the highly competitive and every changing business world. Take advantage of any opportunities for training that come your way.
Career planning is essential in order to succeed. Setting long term goals with no thought process as to how you are going to achieve them often ends in failure. For this reason it is better to set short term goals which are far more specific and easier to formulate. By ensuring that the short term goals are achievable, and relate to your long term career goals, gives you the best chance to succeed. (adapted from: http://careerminer.infomine.com/ )
The Assignment: PART I – fINDING YOUR pERSONALITY tYPE
We are different – that is what makes us human. But one things we do have in common is that as humans we like to put things in categories and then use these categories to predict behaviour. Think of stereotypes. We know stereotypes do not apply to ALL individuals but rather are a general classifications and more often than not there is some truth in a stereotype. Some common Canadian stereotypes are:
· Canadians are often depicted as Mounties, hockey and/or curling players, lumberjacks, or wildlife hunters.
· The country is full of snow, pine woods, moose, bears, and beavers.
· Canadians are obsessed with maple leaves and maple syrup. They all eat Kraft dinner (macaroni and cheese).
· Canadians are often portrayed as being exceptionally polite. The phrase “Welcome to Canada. It’s nice up here, eh?” pretty much defines this stereotype
For many years psychologists have tried to stereotype or classify personalities of individuals. They created something they called “Type Classification” and put individuals in personality types in an attempt to explain their actions and decision making preferences. We know any classification scheme is really on a spectrum or range and people can move along this range between the extremes.
Carl Jung was perhaps one of the most famous early psychologist and classified individuals along the spectrum of Extravert or Introvert. Extravert meaning that you get energized by other people while Introverts get energized when they are alone. We are all somewhere along this spectrum – the question is which is dominate? Introvert or Extrovert. Jung also added two other dimensions Thinking versus Feeling in an attempt to explain or rationalize and individual’s behaviour.
Katharine Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs created probably the most widely used personality classification tool they called the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). It has been used since the early 1950’s and has found to be a very good predictor of an individual’s personality and dominate decision behaviour. Many organizations use this MBTI tool to help facilitate project teams or as a factor in demining suitability for a given job. If you search for => mbti careers you will find many infographics that use the 16 different personality types and match them with potential careers.
Since this is an assignment to work on your future career plan we need to start with finding your our own personify type. Myers-Briggs is copyrighted and as such costs money – so we will use a free tool from 16 personalities.
Steps for Part I
1. Take the free assessment test at =>< https://www.16personalities.com/free-personality-test
2. At the end make sure you sign up so you can get the results email to you. You do NOT have to get the Premium – you only need the free results.
3. From the test you will get a 4 character Personality type – Mine was ENFP. If you click on Personality Type menu you can find your Personality type Icon and short description. You can click on your icon and get a deeper insight into your personality type. You an also see the generalization by country from the menu at the bottom of the page.
4. You will need to use a screen snipping tool to capture this icon and description of your personality type as you will need it for part 2 of this assignment.
5. Go through all the information about your personality type and pull out anything that relates to work or career choices as you will need this for part 2 of this assignment.
The Assignment: PART II – Creating Your Career Inforgraphic
This is not a long winded essay as it is only meant as a starting point. So instead of writing lots of words you will create an infographic. An infographic is a single document, usually in a graphic format. It is designed to make complex information eye catching, shareable and easily viewed. In today’s world of mobile technology people really do not read things any more – we just skim them – this is where an infographic shines.
There are huge variety of infographics. A Google image search for infographics turns up thousands upon thousands of infographics. If you narrow your search to infographic career path you will quickly get the idea of this assignment.
Your assignment is to build your Career Infographic. You are free to choose any design, any layout, any colour scheme – it is all totally up to you. Check some out on Google and get some ideas. Only requirement is that it is kept to a single page and try to keep this page somewhat close to a single piece of letter or legal sized paper. The Grading rubric that will be uses is at the end of this document.
Software:
You can use any software you want, anything from Microsoft Office or a specialized infographic software. The only condition is that it is free or has a trial version and it allows you to save or export your completed infographic into an acrobat pdf format. Note all Microsoft Office products allow the export to acrobat pdf format. Windows 10 also has a built-in pdf printer that allows you to print anything but instead of printing it saves your printout as an acrobat pdf file. You can also use the windows snipping tool or another screen capture tool to take anything on your screen and make it a graphic.
For some the free specialized infographic software check out this review of 13 free tools for creating infographics.http://www.creativebloq.com/infographic/tools-2131971. I used Canva – it is dead simple and the free version is very powerful.
Note: Lots of the free software has templates already prebuilt to make your masterpiece easier and more impressive with less effort! JUST MAKE SURE YOU CAN EXPORT IT OUT TO PDF BEFORE YOU GO TO THE EFFORT OF BUILDING YOUR REAL ASSIGNMENT. It does not matter if it puts a watermark on your document but you have to be able to export into PDF format.
The design and creation of your infographic is entirely up to you. But make sure you personalize it – have you name and your picture and some graphic related to you at the top. The rest of your infographic will have will have the following 2 categories:
1. Personality Type. You must include your personality Type icon and descriptor from Part I. Also go through your personality type Strengths, Weaknesses, Romantic Relationships, Friendships Career paths and Workplace habits from => https://www.16personalities.com . Summarize theses and comment as to whether you think they are appropriate to you. This section will make up about 1/5 of your total infographic.
2. Four Actual Jobs that you think you would like. Using job career websites such as, Indeed.ca, Monster.ca, Workopolis.ca, TalentEgg.ca, etc. you will find 4 real job postings. You will find one job from each of these 4 categories. For full marks you will need to link these jobs to each other or back to your Personality Type Assessment.
· Short Term: This will be a job that you would like to do while you are in school as either a summer job or as coop student.
· Medium Term or Early Career: This will be a position that you would like to do as soon as you graduate and continue to grow into for the next 2 or 3 years after graduation. Note: This Medium Term position should build on your Short term position.
· Long Term: This would be a position that you think you would like to do around 5 years or so after graduation. Note: This Long Term position should build on your medium term position.
· Totally off the wall or bizarre job. A job that is not connected to your short, medium or long term career but rather one that sounds awesome for you and hits on all of your personality attributes.
For each one of these 4 jobs you must have:
· The citation or URL address of the job. . The URL will likely be very long – to make it fit just make the text very very small AND make sure that it is hyperlinked. I do NOT have to be able to read it – just click on it. Do not hyperlink the image as the markers will not be able to see it so you will lose marks
· Some kind of related graphic
· A very brief description of duties and responsibilities. Note: you do not need to list all – just the most critical ones
· A very brief description of the required skills. Note: you do not need to list all – just the most critical ones
· A very brief statement as to why this particular job interests you
Remember an Infographic does NOT have a lot of text or words – No paragraphs no long sentences just short and concise.
Due Date: Due: _________________________________________________
Grading Rubric
| CATEGORY | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 |
| Are you identified with name & Picture | Have both name and picture and well done | Have both name and picture but could be improved | Missing name or picture | Missing name AND picture |
| Personality Type | Includes Personality type Icon and brief description. Personal type description is very clear, simple and effectively presented and relates well to the jobs. | Covers personality type well. Very clear, simple and effectively presented but does not relate well to the jobs. | Covers personality type but could be clearer, simpler or better presented. | Content is minimal, way too complicated. Difficult to understand. |
| Four actual Jobs that you think you would like | Description of job, duties and required skills of all 4 jobs done well | Description of job, duties and required skills of all 4 jobs could be improved. | Description of job, duties and required skills of all 4 jobs needs much improvement. | Do not have 4 jobs or the ones that are there are very poorly done. |
| Progression | Long Term builds on medium term which builds on short term | Missing 1 of the connections between Long, Medium & Short | Missing 2 of the connections between Long, Medium & Short | Missing all the connections between Long, Medium & Short |
| Graphics | All graphics are related to the topic and make it easier to understand. | All graphics are related to the topic and most make it easier to understand. | All graphics relate to the topic. | Graphics do not relate to the topic. |
| Attractiveness | Makes excellent use of font, color, graphics, effects, etc. to enhance the presentation. | Makes good use of font, color, graphics, effects, etc. to enhance to presentation. | Makes use of font, color, graphics, effects, etc. but occasionally these detract from the presentation content. | Use of font, color, graphics, effects etc. but these often distract from the presentation content. |
| Mechanics | Capitalization and punctuation are correct throughout. | There is 1 error in capitalization or punctuation. | There are 2 errors in capitalization or punctuation. | More than 2 errors in capitalization or punctuation. |
| Image and info Credits | Credit/citations provided for all 4 jobs that you found. It is not necessary to cite the images | Missing 1 credit or citation | Missing 2 credits or citations | Missing more than 2 credits or citation. |
Assignment: Career Infographic Due: Tuesday February 27 @ 10:30 am Page 4 of 5
