Planning Your Development

Destination: Inspiration

Introduction

• In order for you to get the most out of your work placement, it is vital that you plan correctly.

• You need to look at the areas you need to develop and create an action plan of how you are going to achieve those.

• In this session, we are going to look at how to evaluate your own skills and create an action plan based on your current needs.

Session Objectives

• By the end of this session, all students will be able to:

• Explain why it is important to plan for your development

• Carry out a SWOT Analysis

• Carry out a Skills Audit

• Prepare an action plan

Planning for Your Future

• You are already planning for your future by attending college and carrying out a work placement.

• So why is it necessary to do further planning?

Why is it important to plan your development?

• Allows you to identify the areas you need to improve on.

• Allows you to compare your skills and qualities to those you will need in your job.

• Gives you focus for the future.

• Allows you to set a timeline for your development.

• Will impress your employer!

SWOT Analysis

• This is a simple method of working out what skills and qualities you already have and those that you are lacking:

• You simply look at the skills and qualities that you have and put them into the appropriate box.

• It helps if you know what an employer is looking for.

Strengths Weaknesses

Opportunities Threats

SWOT

Strengths

You are good at these now.

Skills & qualities you have

You need to maintain these

Weaknesses

You need to learn these skills or qualities.

Behaviours you need to stop.

Opportunities

What are you doing at the moment to increase your

employability?

Courses & training events should go here

Threats

These are things that could potentially stop you achieving

your goals.

SWOT

Skills Audit

• This is another simple activity you can do to determine whether or not you are ready for a particular job and what you still need to develop.

• In this one, you need to know the skills and qualities required by an employer.

• You then grade yourself on each:

• Can do really well

• Needs work

• Can’t do at all

• This will allow you to determine which skills and qualities you need to put in your action plan.

Action Plan

• Once you have established which skills you need to work on, you can create an action plan.

• It is important that the targets you set for yourself are SMART:

Specific

• Make sure that your goal is very specific.

• “Improve my attendance” is very vague.

• “Increase my attendance from 80% to 95%” gives a very specific target for you to aim for.

• Make sure your target tells you EXACTLY what you are going to achieve.

Measurable

• All targets should be measurable.

• That means when you are done, there should be some sort of proof.

• For instance, “Pass my course with distinction grade”, is measurable because you will have a certificate as proof at the end.

Attainable / Achievable

• You can set yourself the best goal in the world but if it is impossible for you to achieve it is meaningless.

• For instance, “Become a vet” is a great aspiration but unless you have A’s and A* at GCSE it is not achievable.

• Make sure your target can be achieved in the time you have set yourself.

Relevant

• When you are setting targets for your personal development, they don’t just have to be academic.

• You can set yourself targets related to your personal growth and development.

• However, if your boss asks you to create an action plan, don’t put targets in there related to your hobbies!

Time-Bound

• In an action plan, every target should have a target date that you would like to achieve it by.

This is a SMART Target; True or False?

This is a SMART Target; True or False?

This is a SMART Target; True or False?

Summary

• Now that you have worked your way through this slideshow, there are three activities for you to do:

• SWOT Analysis

• Skills Audit

• Create an action plan

• Once you have created these documents, upload them to 3D Learning and I will give you feedback.

• Don’t forget, you will be asked to do these tasks as part of your assignment do this is your chance to practice before submitting work for grading!