- temporary jobs become more valuable;
- for the majority of people the family and the organization they work for
become central institutions in their lives.
Method presentation
Career planning and development^12 is not a linear process, but a repetitive and continuing
one, involving understanding the labour market as a whole, evaluating personal strengths
and weaknesses, articulating one’s own vision of career, drawing up a realistic plan for
the future and making use of one’s worth in order to reach the proposed professional aims
(Donner, 1998).
In career planning several information sources are required, to guide the person:
- Self-assessment: people must consider all their aspirations as human beings,
in correlation with their aptitudes, knowledge and development potential
through continuous learning. In addition, they must evaluate the
characteristics of the environment they live / work in. Self-assessment
presupposes knowledge of: aptitudes, interests, and values. - Turning to experts / counsellors: seeking the experience and advice of people
whose professional stature enables them to offer suggestions. - Taking the development opportunities by enrolling in training programmes,
setting new personal goals.
After analysing one’s personality profile it is also important to reflect on academic
aspects such as: titles, background, master degrees, languages, etc., which should be part
of the personal portfolio. At the end of the analysis a SWOT matrix will be drawn up in
order to oppose strengths (resources and opportunities) to weaknesses (flaws and threats).
The reasoning is: what strengths can the person rely on, considering the opportunities on
the labour market, and what are the weaknesses to be worked on considering the current
threats?
The starting point for a good career planning is self-knowledge: that is proper awareness
of one’s personality features. Puchol (1994) recommends using basic questions to reveal
self-knowledge:
(^12) Career planning and development involves turning to a series of related or independent methods. Some of
these are presented as independent instruments in the Compendium.