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Developing career resilience
Developing career resilience

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2.3 Taking action

The final step is to turn your short-term goals into more concrete actions, and the scenarios in Tables 1 and 2 show one method you could use.

Table 1: Scenario A
Goal: To build my physical health in order to support my overall resilience.

Current status:

  • a.What experience do I have?
  • b.What knowledge do I have?
  • c.What skills do I have?
  • a.I have done regular exercise in the past but not in the last year.
  • b.I know that it will be good for me but can’t motivate myself to do it.
  • c.I have the ability to walk/run etc. but need to develop my stamina.
Development/training/knowledge needed to reach my goal: I’d like to identify a form of exercise that I can enjoy and feel motivated to engage with on a regular basis.
Action plan:
  • Find out about exercise classes in my area
  • Join a class to start next month
  • Attend regularly
Outcome: I’ve signed up for a Pilates class that starts next week
Evaluation: This is a positive first step towards improving my fitness
Next step: Ask for regular feedback from the instructor to help me measure my progress
Table 2: Scenario B
Goal: To explore alternative career ideas.

Current status:

  • a.What experience do I have?
  • b.What knowledge do I have?
  • c.What skills do I have?
  • a.I haven’t really researched careers before as I just took the first job that was offered to me.
  • b.I know that there are useful websites available but need to identify them.
  • c.I have the required research skills.
Development/training/knowledge needed to reach my goal: It would be useful to talk to someone about my career options.
Action plan:
  • Look at my university careers website to investigate career information and/or book an appointment.
  • Research three career ideas – find out what skills and qualifications are needed for each.
  • Use my list of skills, identified in Activity 6 in Week 7, to match against what I find out.
Outcome: I’ve visited my university website and they have lots of careers information on there. I can book an online alumni appointment when I’m ready.
Evaluation: Using the resources on the website, I’ve already researched one new career area.
Next step: Decide whether the sector I’ve researched is interesting or not and move onto the next.

Now it’s your turn!

Activity 4 Planning your actions

Timing: Allow about 30 minutes

Use the template below to work through each of your three short-term goals from Activity 2. If your workplace has a template that is used to support performance review processes etc., use that if you prefer.

Table 3: Three short-term goals
1 2 3
Goal:
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Current status:

  • a.What experience do I have?
  • b.What knowledge do I have?
  • c.What skills do I have?
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Development/training/knowledge needed to reach my goal:
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Action plan:
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Outcome:
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Evaluation:
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Next step:
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Discussion

Your next step should be to prioritise these action plans. Which goal will you work towards first? Are they actually sequential goals or can you do them alongside each other? Make sure you don’t take on too much alongside your day job – if you don’t achieve all your goals this can be a negative experience.

You should now have a set of SMART goals and an action plan for achieving them.