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Part III
Mapping Out Your Career Plan
Your Occupational Goals
Based on your exploration of occupations that match your self-assessments, you should have been able to identify a field of work or a specific occupation that you wish to pursue as a goal. Your choice may, at this stage, be an occupational field such as "Teaching" or you may have been able to narrow down your choice to a specific occupation, such as "Elementary School Teacher" or "Foreign Language Teacher" or "Mathematics Teacher". Once you have decided upon a general field you can refine your choice during the first of year of college or technical training following your graduation from high school.
Your Educational Plan
After you have identified the field of work or occupation you wish to pursue, the next step is to develop an educational plan to make it come true. If you need an AAS (2 year degree) to complete your plan then this is your educational goal, if you need a bachelors degree (4 year degree) to complete your plan then this will be your educational goal. In either case you need an educational plan, this plan will consist of three parts.
Overall definition of educational plan with some sort of timeline for completing it.
A detailed plan for the first several years, that includes the courses you will need to take in the sequence that they need to be completed.
A financial plan of how much this will cost you and how you plan to finance it.
Your Work Experience Plan
You now have your occupational goal defined and your educational plan to accomplish it The next step is to develop a work experience plan. This plan is to include a place to learn all of the skills you will need to start your professional career. This plan needs to include three sections:
Operational skills, those skills you will need to know about the area you have selected as your career choice, such as if your choice is front office manager, then you need to learn all of the operational skills needed to work any shift in the front office.
Management skills, those skills you will need to know to manage this area. If we keep with the front office manager: budgeting, scheduling, training, human resource related, marketing, etc.
Interpersonal skills, those skills you will need to function well as a leader, to interact with your subordinates, and those skills needed to interact as a member of the management team.
Your Resume
You now have your occupational goals, educational plan and work experience plan. The next step is to create a resume that would be used when seeking employment. The resume has six (6) sections to it. They are:
Career objective: This section should be specific so that an employer can match your request to an opening.
Education: This section should list institutions from which you have graduated, or are about to graduate. A special section is created for you to list major subjects that support your job request.
Experience: This section should list those work experiences that support your job request in some way.
Special skills: This section is a place to list those operational skills you have obtained so far in your professional career, that apply to your job request.
References: It is usually not a good idea to list references until the employer shows an interest in you, unless you have been requested to apply for a specific job.
Availability: This section lets the employer know when you are available for employment in their organization.
Part I - Self Assessment
Part II - Exploring Your Options
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