A major key of career development is implementing a career assessment in order to develop a plan. The University of Connecticut’s Center for Career Development has provided a 3-step guide for crafting the framework of your career assessment. UConn identifies the three steps as exploring, preparing, and implementing.
- Exploring
It all begins with exploring your values, interests, skills, and how they tie together. Engaging in tasks related to your interests and skills will gradually improve them—identifying these skills is the first step in the career assessment process. - Preparing
Although honing your skills is a form of preparation, there are others to consider. Those honed skills can now be used to gain experience in your field. With some experience under your belt, you’ll be able to build viable connections with talented individuals that share your values and visions. Making a plan for honing your skills is a necessary step of the career assessment process. - Implementing
Now is when you apply the things you’ve consolidated—skills, experience, connections—and act on them. Think of “exploring” and “preparing” as your high school-self deciding who you are, what you’re good at, and what you want to be, and “implementing” as your successful leap to college and a degree. Take stock of all of your resources to use them to their full capacity.
Career development is a process that will benefit from an initial career assessment; use these three steps as stepping stones towards an exceptional career assessment and development plan.
