THE STAGES OF CAREER PLANNING

Career planning is very essential because your career not only define your personality but
it also depends on your skills and also your area of interest to invest your valuable time
and brain. In this report, there is a brief overview about different stages of career
planning.
Stage1 – Reflection and Self-Assessment
The first stage of career planning is to know and evaluate yourself. According to Andy,
Self-assessment revolves around the thoughtful consideration, reflection, and evaluation
of your interests, personality characteristics, values, and skills through a variety of
methods ("What is Career Planning? – Overview of Five Basic Steps to Career Planning
– Career Action Now", 2010). One have to gather information about himself while
choosing about a specific profession.

Stage 2 – Exploration
The second stage is to investigate and explore by looking at one’s personal interests,
skills, values, and work-life needs ("Five Steps to Career Planning", 2014). The
procedure includes exploring the world of work in depth, narrowing a general
occupational direction into a specific one through an informed decision making process,
and declaring a major ("Five Steps to Career Planning", 2014).

Stage 3 – Decision-Making and Goal Setting

The decision-making stage of the career planning process is when one has analyzes and
reflects on all the pieces of information about himself and he carefully collected
profession alternatives together as most ideal as, all in order to generate realistic short-
term and long-term career-related goals and the steps to reach them("What is Career
Planning? – Overview of Five Basic Steps to Career Planning – Career Action Now",
2010). One has to set one’s goal as per educational qualification, work understanding,
needs and desires in life. Once goal is set, then one can target on how to acknowledge it
and reach the final destination.

Stage 4 – Gaining Experience

Career related experience can help to build up the skills, capacities and knowledge to set
professional objectives ("Five Steps to Career Planning", 2014). Understudies can make
themselves more attractive by joining in an entry level position or doing an internship.
Students can work in summer vacations, part time jobs, volunteer works, or
extracurricular activities in institutions.

Stage 5 – Implementation
This is the final stage where one actualizes what one have realized and push ahead
towards another occupation or more propelled instruction. One should likewise keep on
evaluating one’s alternatives and make changes as required.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MAJOR AND CAREER SELECTION

A Major generally describes your focused studies at university. Career is used to describe
what type of work you've chosen to focus on, usually after graduation. The reason a
major is so essential is because it is a scholarly necessity for graduation, not on account
of it will figure out what profession or occupation one can enter (Charleston, n.d.). The
connection between a major in science and a profession is not as immediate as a great
many people think. Because Science may include many professional fields for example
engineering jobs, medical profession, reach jobs etc. The essential information,
knowledge and aptitudes created in a major can be connected to various distinctive
professions. According to the writing in “Help Your Student Understand Major vs.
Career “, Career should be selected on the basis of interest in the work and on having the
abilities and skills needed for the work, not necessarily on a particular major (Charleston,
n.d.). Career selection are also depends on good career information, and the most helpful
career information usually originates from individual research and work involvement
outside the classroom (Charleston, n.d.). It is also possible to have a Career completely
unrelated to one’s Major.

Bibliography:
What is Career Planning? – Overview of Five Basic Steps to Career Planning – Career
Action Now. (2010). Careeractionnow.com. Retrieved 26 February 2010, from
http://careeractionnow.com/2010/02/26/what-is-career-planning-overview-of-five-basic-
steps-to-career-planning/

Five Steps to Career Planning. (2014). Cravencc.edu. Retrieved 2 July 2014, from
http://cravencc.edu/students/career-transfer-services/five-steps-to-career-planning/

Charleston, C. Help Your Student Understand Major vs. Career - College of Charleston.
Careercenter.cofc.edu. Retrieved 6 May 2017, from
http://careercenter.cofc.edu/parents/help-understand.php