Assignment
Guidelines for the Personal Career Plan Paper
The Personal Career Plan Paper should be between 15 and 25 pages in length (including Appendices). Higher quality papers are typically longer and more comprehensive than passing, but lower quality papers. The Personal Career Plan should integrate and extend your learning and thinking as developed throughout the course, but particularly through the completion of the reading and various Career Action exercises in the Coursepack/DML text, as manifest ideally by including both the complete CA exercises (templates on Moodle) in the Appendix, and an analysis of their implications in the narrative. That is to say, this paper should reflect the insights, recommendations and concepts presented in this text. In addition, as specified below, the contents of homework assignments should be integrated into the paper. While it is possible to earn a passing grade on this paper with a minimal inclusion of the Career Action material, papers aiming for the grade of "A" should explicitly integrate and/or include as much of that material as possible. Specific recommendations for which material to include are provided below.
The paper should be professionally written, word-processed, and ideally, printed on a high quality laser or ink-jet printer, presented in an appropriate professional binding of an appropriate size (NOT a three ring binder!). All pages should be numbered, and a Table of Contents based upon appropriate headings and subheadings, (including those specified below), should be used. In addition, personally tailored introduction and conclusion sections should be employed, depending upon the contents of the individual paper. The conclusion section should comment on the overall learning value of the course and this paper to you personally. Spelling, grammar, style, and print quality will all be important components of the paper grade.
The paper should be organized around the following headings and content. That is to say, you should use the following headings in this specific order to structure your paper.
Introduction
Explain the purpose and scope of the paper as it relates to your personal goals.
Personal History
This section of the paper should outline aspects of your personal background that relate to your attitudes, values, abilities, and occupational preferences. Please specify your age, year in school, and major/minor as of this writing in this section. Background material that is relevant to your talents, interests, and career aspirations should be presented here. In particular, I would like to see a discussion of the development of your attitudes, values, abilities, and career interests from childhood until now. Comments on the development of your values, interests, and abilities should ultimately be related to your current occupational interests, choices and goals.
Skills, Talents and Abilities
This section should identify the specific competencies and/or aptitudes that you possess that can be related to your various occupational prospects, and should identify your immediate career or occupational target. As described in the Coursepack CH 7 "Career Exploration," your competencies should be categorized as (a) functional skills (i.e., transferable competencies), (b) work content skills (i.e., job-specific skills), and (c) adaptive skills (i.e., personal qualities and work performance traits). This section should reflect your work done on the assigned Career Action exercises. Specifically, you should integrate your responses to CA2-3: Workplace Skills and Competencies Profile; CA2-4: Career Competencies Inventory; CA3-1: Education, Training, and Activities Inventory; CA3-2: Experience and Skills Inventory; and from CA3-4: Values, Preferences, and Personal Qualities Inventory, specifically Part 3: Personal Qualities and Work Performance Traits. You should summarize the relevant results of these exercises in brief, neatly typed tables in the body of the text. It would be preferable to use brief summary tables in the body of the text (including 3-5 or more of your strongest skills in each of the three categories, drawn from across the five listed Career Actions), with the more elaborate and complete content (including the files you created using the Moodle templates for each exercise) presented in appropriately labeled and referenced appendices. Your goal in this section is to identify and explain the unique set of capabilities that you will personally bring to your chosen occupation and employer. Better papers will provide many examples of relevant skills from multiple Career Actions, and will provide narrative examples and explanations of their relevance to your career target. Note that this section could be a revision and elaboration of the Work Abilities portion of Homework #1.
Personal Values
In this section you should outline and explain the personal and work values that you hold which relate to your goals for life and work, and describe your preferred working environment. Identify the values and satisfactions that you seek in your life's work, as well as the type of lifestyle you hope to enjoy. Include in this section a discussion of the salary, type/region of the country and/or world that you would like to live and work in (e.g., urban, suburban, or rural employment in the northeast, Midwest, Brazil, London, etc.), as well as a brief description of the type of working environment in which you would like to be employed. This section should integrate your work on CA3-4: Values, Preferences, and Personal Qualities Inventory, specifically Parts 1: Values and Part 2: Work Environment Preferences, as well as the Ryan Brook Values Inventory (contained in the Coursepack and available electronically on Moodle). You should summarize the results of these exercises in neatly typed tables either in the body of the text or in appendices. As in the previous section, it would be preferable to use brief summary tables in the body of the text (listing your 3-5 top values and 3-5 top work preferences), with the more elaborate and complete content from the Moodle templates and overall summary of the Ryan Brook Values Inventory presented in appropriately labeled and referenced appendices. Better papers will explain why the set of values and work preferences that you have are a good match for your career target. Note that this section could be a revision and elaboration of the Work Values portion of Homework #1.
Concrete Career Goals
This section should be tailored to your thinking at the present time through the selection of one of the following two possible emphases:
Long Term Emphasis: Select this approach if you are reasonably certain of your long term occupational interests and goals. Specify the general occupation that you plan to engage in during your lifetime, and identify a potential career path or career ladder that you might follow to achieve your long term goal over the next 5 to 15+ years. That is, identify one or more entry level positions that you might seek upon graduation from college, as well as a sequence of logical promotions and/or transfers during the mid-career stage which can be expected to facilitate your achievement of your long-term career goal.
Short Term Emphasis: Select this approach if you are still relatively uncertain of your long term occupational interests and goals, and wish to gain some full-time work experience in order to clarify these. In this approach, you should identify two to five occupational prospects and/or entry level jobs that interest you and would be a good match for your personal background and characteristics. Briefly explain why each of these prospects/jobs would be a good match for you. Out of this list of two to five prospects, identify the single prospect that is your top choice at the present time.
Integration of Personal Characteristics and Occupational Goals
In this section you should specify the occupation and/or position that you hope to obtain upon graduation, and explain in detail why that occupation/position is appropriate for you. That is, explain how the requirements and opportunities offered by the job prospect (in terms of the Occupational Outlook Handbook dimensions of "What They Do;" "Work Environment;" "How to Become One;" "Pay;" and "Job Outlook") provide a good match for your personal characteristics as outlined earlier in this paper (i.e., Personal History, Skills, Talents and Abilities, and Personal Values, including salary, desired location, and working environment). This section of the paper will require that you demonstrate research on your chosen occupation(s). You should look up your occupation(s) in the Occupational Outlook Handbook, O*NET, New Guide to Occupational Exploration, or in other appropriate sources as necessary. Use the library references available though PSU and/or the Internet to collect relevant information that will allow you to demonstrate that the chosen prospect is a good match for your personal characteristics, goals, and desires. Be sure to list all of your research sources in the bibliography at the end of your paper. Note that the bibliography is very important. More research demonstrated through the bibliography will yield a higher grade. Include a section in the appendix that summarizes CA 3-7: Job Qualifications Profile for your chosen job. Better papers will provide a clear and concrete integration of your personal characteristics with the demands and opportunities of the occupation/job prospect, written to integrate the content of CA 3-7 within the five subheadings listed above from the Occupational Outlook Handbook. Note that this section could be a revision and elaboration of the analysis you did for Homework #2.
Potential Organizational Choices
Identify and research one organization that hires people (with the type of qualifications that you possess) into your chosen occupation within your desired location. The organization you research can be different from the one in your job listing/tailored resume. It should be an organization that sounds exciting to you, to allow you to research and identify those aspects of that organization that particularly appeal to you. Explain how your research on the organization's policies, structure, culture, and strategic outlook demonstrates that they would be appropriate places for you to work. That is, use your research to demonstrate that the salary range, location, working environment, and other aspects of the organization and job would be a good match for your personal preferences. Note that this discussion is to focus not on what you want, but what the company has for policies, structure, culture, and strategic outlook. You are expected to research a minimum of one organization, explaining the relevant dimensions just outlined in detail. You should use PSU library, Internet (such as Vault, Glassdoor, and multiple creative problem solving online searches), as well as any personally requested information (such as email, annual reports, etc.) as resources in this section. I expect to see detailed research on at least one company that you might like to work for in this section. Be sure to list all of your research sources (including personal interviews) in the bibliography at the end of your paper.
I would recommend that you use four subheadings in this section: Policies (describing salary and benefit structures, specific policies on sexual harassment, security, political activities, etc.); Structure (describing the size of the organization and how it is structured; e.g., number of divisions or locations, level of decentralization, etc.); Culture (including the mission and values, expectations for employee behavior such as egalitarian versus hierarchical, etc.); and Strategic Outlook (describing the degree to which the organization can be expected to grow, remain stable, or decline in the future, thus impacting your longer term career prospects). Note that this is a frequent weak point in previous student's papers. It will require effort to research a company beyond the content of a job posting. Note that this is NOT a description of the requirements necessary to get the job as listed in the job posting; rather, it is a description of the whole company or organization in the aggregate. Better papers will review the company's website in detail, and often obtain further information from news reports, interviews, online social networking sites or informational sites such as Vault.com, and/or other sources as well.
Personal Job Search Plan
Using the material presented in the Harwood text, class discussions, and recommended Internet links, outline your specific plan for locating and becoming hired into your entry level job. That is, explain how you will generate interest in your job candidacy among individual decision makers in appropriate organizations. Develop and present a concrete networking plan for penetrating the "hidden" job market. Specify in detail the things that you have done and plan to do in order to maximize the probability of obtaining your ideal job. Include your resume in an appendix, and explain in this section why you have used the specific approach to your resume (i.e., chronological, functional, or combination) that you have in order to achieve your stated career goals. Also include in an appendix an advertisement or job posting similar to your ideal, as well as a cover letter expressing your interest in that position. Both the resume and cover letter should be clearly and appropriately tailored to the specific job posting that you use. Note that this section may be tailored to individual needs for an existing or promised job with no posting, or to application for graduate school. If you wish to use an approach other than tailoring to a standard job posting, you should discuss that with me before submitting your paper for specific guidance on how to do this. In this section, I will be looking for extensive application of the material from the DML text. In particular, you should include a table summarizing information about the people your Personal Career Network; (please include the title, position, and organizational affiliation of each person in this table). If you conducted a Career Information Survey meeting, you should specify the details of who you met with, what you discussed, and what you learned from the interviews. This could be a reworking of the material you developed for optional Homework #4. The job posting, cover letter, and resume could be a reworking of the materials submitted and critiqued for Homework #3. Better papers will describe a detailed information gathering plan for generating job leads, including a concrete networking plan listing names, company affiliations, addresses, occupations, relationship to you, etc., for all relevant contacts. Such papers will also include a highly polished and refined resume tailored to a concrete personal job objective which is aligned with the contents and focus of this personal career plan.
Integrative General Education Insights
Based upon the various class discussions, readings, and exercises in the course, explain how your learning through various general education perspectives has been integrated into your career planning process, and will likely impact upon both your life and career development in the decades to come. Follow the guidelines for the General Education Integration Exercise in explicitly integrating comments on the various general education perspectives offered at PSU. Remember that the emphasis here should be on the perspectives in a generic sense, and not on the content of individual courses. In particular, relevant comments should be made regarding the contributions or relevance of the philosophical, technological, and social/psychological perspectives to your analysis, thinking, and decision-making in this paper. If appropriate, the historical and global perspectives should also be integrated. Note that this has been a frequent weak section in previous papers. Better papers will provide insightful analysis of how your personal career development and success will be dependent upon integrating an understanding of issues or problems through multiple disciplinary perspectives, and will include the use of perspective concepts and definitions.
Bibliography
Provide a complete listing of all source and research material used in the development of this paper. Be sure to include complete bibliographic and Internet references in appropriate format (see for example, https://citationmachine.net/ ). The links available in the syllabus are an excellent way to achieve success here. In a general sense, you may follow APA format in listing references, although any generally accepted reference style will be acceptable. Note that Internet citations should include a narrative description of the material used, the date accessed, and the complete URL. The following brief description provides some examples:
Humanities Style
To cite files available on the WWW, give the author's name, last name first (if known); the full title of the work, in quotation marks; the title of the complete work (if applicable), in italics; any version or file numbers; and the date of the document or last revision (if available). Next, list the protocol (e.g., "http") and the full URL, followed by the date of access in parentheses.
Burka, Lauren P. "A Hypertext History of Multi-User Dimensions." MUD History. 1993. https://www.utopia.com/talent/ lpb/muddex/essay (2 Aug. 1996).
Scientific Style
Give the author's last name and initials (if known) and the date of publication in parentheses. Next, list the full title of the work, capitalizing only the first word and any proper nouns; the title of the complete work or site (if applicable) in italics, again capitalizing only the first word and any proper nouns; any version or file numbers, enclosed in parentheses; the protocol and address, including the path or directories necessary to access the document; and finally the date accessed, enclosed in parentheses.
Burka, L. P. (1993). A hypertext history of multi-user dimensions. MUD history. https://www.utopia.com/talent/ lpb/muddex/essay (2 Aug. 1996).
Further questions regarding format should be addressed to the reference librarians. The material in this section will be used to judge the depth of your research effort, in addition to the actual content provided in the paper.
Conclusion
Comment on the overall learning value of the course and this paper to you personally
General Summary
The paper will be graded by section, using the form on the following page. The overall paper grade will be the arithmetic average of each of the individual components.
Contents of the appendices should be appropriately labeled, both on the documents themselves and in the Table of Contents. Any material presented in an appendix should be explicitly referenced at the appropriate point in the body of the paper, and not simply "added on."