To further refine the SWOT, here are some other questions to ask about yourself:
Strengths:
- What are your advantages?
- What do you do well?
- Why did you decide to enter the field you will enter upon graduation?
- What were the motivating factors and influences?
- Do these factors still represent some of your inherent strengths?
- What need do you expect to fill within your organization?
- What have been your most notable achievements?
- To what do you attribute your success?
- How do you measure your success?
- What knowledge or expertise will you bring to the company you join that may not have been available to the organization before?
- What is your greatest asset?
Weaknesses:
- What could be improved?
- What do you do badly?
- What should you avoid?
- What are your professional weaknesses?
- How do they affect your job performance? (These might include weakness in technical skill areas or in leadership or interpersonal skills.)
- Think about your most unpleasant experiences in school or in past jobs and consider whether some aspect of your personal or professional life could be a root cause.
Opportunities:
- Where are the promising prospects facing you?
- What is the "state of the art" in your particular area of expertise?
- Are you doing everything you can to enhance your exposure to this area?
- What formal training and education can you add to your credentials that might position you appropriately for more opportunities?
- Would an MBA or another graduate degree add to your advantage?
- How quickly are you likely to advance in your chosen career?
- Useful opportunities can come from such things as:
- Changes in technology and markets on both a broad and industry-specific scale
- Changes in government policy related to your field
- Changes in social patterns, population profiles, lifestyle changes, etc.
Threats:
- What obstacles do you face?
- Are the requirements for your desired job field changing?
- Does changing technology threaten your prospective position?
- What is the current trend line for your personal area of expertise?
- Could your area of interest be fading in comparison with more emergent fields?
- Is your chosen field subject to internal politics that will lead to conflict?
- Is there any way to change the politics or to perhaps defuse your involvement in potential disputes?
- How might the economy negatively affect your future company and your work group?
- Will your future company provide enough access to new challenges to keep you sharp -- and marketable -- in the event of sudden unemployment?
Explore your own self-perception of your strengths, but also put yourself inside a prospective employer's head as you consider your strong points. Avoid false modesty, but also be brutally honest and realistic with yourself. Start out by simply making a list of words that describe you; chances are many of these characteristics compromise your strengths.
One of your greatest strengths can love the work you do. Learning to "follow your bliss" should be a critical component of managing your career. Some people know from an early age what kind of work will make them happy. For others, nailing down the self-knowledge that leads to career fulfillment comes from a process of exploring interests, skills, personality, learning style, and values.
In assessing your weaknesses, think about what prospective employers might consider to be the areas you could improve upon. Facing your frailties now can give you a huge head start in career planning.
As humans, we find it relatively difficult to identify the areas where we are weak. But this assessment helps to identify areas where we may need to improve. If you identify a skill that you know is in your chosen field, but you are weak in that skill area, you need to take steps to improve that skill. Past performance appraisals and even your grades and teacher comments from school provide valuable feedback.
Doing a SWOT will not only help to guide you toward a specific career that you will enjoy, it will also give you an idea of how to market yourself so that you can get that dream job that you want. From this analysis, you will have a road map that shows you how to capitalize on your strengths and minimize or eliminate your weaknesses. You should then use this map to take advantage of opportunities and avoid or lessen threats.
After you've analyzed your strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities, you should use that information to plan how to market yourself.
The marketing planning process entails a three-step process:
- Determining objectives
- Developing marketing strategies
- Strategizing an action program.
Objectives — define your career objectives. What is your ideal job upon graduation (or the job you would like to transition to from your current job)? What are some other positions you could accept? What is your five-year career goal?
Marketing Strategies — a broad marketing strategy or “game plan” for attaining your objectives. What are the companies and organizations you’re going to target to obtain your objectives—your ideal job? How will you communicate with these firms? The strategies you identify should utilize all of the resources available to you, such as your personal network and a partnership with a mentor.
Action Programs — according to marketing principles, marketing strategies should be turned into specific action programs that answer a number of questions, including: What will be done? When will it be done? Who is responsible for doing it? Your key task here is setting specific timetables and deadlines for getting the career and company information you identified in the marketing strategy step.
So now that you’ve identified some key questions to ask when considering a career change, how do you know what the right career field is for you?
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