2 The career planning process: knowing yourself

The career planning process is shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3 Career planning diagram

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Diagram showing four stages with arrows pointing clockwise to each stage. The first says ‘Know yourself’, the second says ‘Explore opportunities’, the third says ‘Decide what to do’ and the fourth says ‘Take action’.

Figure 3 Career planning diagram

Although this is a simple diagram it can have a major impact on the way you see your career and on how you decide to develop it.

The diagram shows a continuous process but this doesn’t mean just jumping into the cycle at any of the points. The starting point is always ‘know yourself’. Doing this is an important first step as it makes you the centre of the decisions and the career choices you make. If you were to start from ‘explore opportunities’, it might be likely that you would start by thinking that you must fit in with, or that you are defined by, what is already available. You will see in Activity 2 in the next section that there are advantages to creating your own route.