Career Action Plan & Self-Reflection based on Personal Skills

Question

Task: This report is a self-reflection report, which will enable you to identify a career action plan.
You need to:
• Complete a personal analysis of what you have to offer this employer at the moment. This should include your current skills, knowledge and experiences, both academic and from other areas of your life. However, it needs also to identify if there are any areas for development. For example: Where could you do with adding more evidence? What additional skills & experiences do you need to add?
• Once you have answered the above, you are in a position to develop your Career Action Plan. This should show both the short-term and longer-term actions required to prepare you for an opportunity in the area you have researched. Your actions must be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-bound)
• Finally, you also need to prepare a Curriculum Vitae (CV) and LinkedIn profile. You are asked to complete these exactly as your situation is now, as if you were applying for the position you identified. They can then be tailored and adapted for use in other methods of recruitment, for example on-line application forms.

Answer

Introductionto Career Action Plan
It has become essential for students to recognize their own strengths, skills and areas of development for improving themselves both personally and professionally to enhance their employability. The report here has carried out a personal analysis of current skills, knowledge and experience and based on such skills a career action plan has been developed. Besides, a curriculum vitae has also been prepared along with a LinkedIn profile depending on the job identified and skills required. The job advertisement showing the requirement for a human resource graduate for QinetiQ gained my attention. This is research and development platform brand consisting of 6000 resolute professionals offering experimentation facilities and expertise in different areas of science, technical and engineering (QinetiQ, 2021). It is one of the early career programs offered by the company, which can be beneficial for my professional development.some of the skills, knowledge and experience required for this job include communication, leadership, adaptability, technical expertise like HRIS, performance management, educational background in human resources or business and others.

Personal Analysis
I have been able to identify my core strengths and competencies by undertaking the previous assessments and analysing my skills compared to the ones required in the job advertisement of QinetiQ. In this regard, I have practical work experience of four areas in professional field. This has enabled me to gain various soft skills such as communication, interpersonal, teamwork, active listening and adaptability skills (Balcar, 2016). During the four years of my work experience, I have come across various challenges and problems, and handled them in an effective manner because of my adaptability skills. Furthermore, I have worked together with team members in various group projects that have improved my communication, interpersonal and teamworking skills. While previously I was not efficient in confronting conflicts in teams, I am now more confident in resolving such issues by leading the team in an effective manner. Besides, I have also gained critical thinking and problem-solving skills in the past few years by having relevant work experiences where I faced difficulties or obstacles (Matteson, Andersonand Boyden, 2016). I possess the ability of analysing critical situations, identifying suitable alternatives for resolving problems and taking effective decisions. Moreover, I have also been able to brush up my technical skills such as Microsoft office applications and using social media platforms for the companies where I worked. I am also self-motivated in learning new things and achieving desired outcomes. Dealing with customers has also made a good negotiator and made me business minded and market oriented.

Despite improving both hard and soft skills, I have also recognized weaknesses while analysing my personality. I often faced difficulties in managing more than two tasks simultaneously that became necessary during time shortage. This shows that I lack time management skills as I am unable to prioritize the tasks and accordingly work on performing them (Ozsoy, 2014). Furthermore, I also become easily frustrated or disappointed in case of failures in any task. This indicates that my confidence gets hampered when I am unable to attain any specific objective. I also lack the ability of making quick and speedy decisions. This is because I spend a lot of time evaluating alternatives for resolving any problem, which is effective in some situations. However, this lengthy decision-making becomes problematic when I am required to take an instant decision (Ampountolas, Shawand James, 2019). I further need to acquire networking skills for my professional development and having connections with professionals in the human resource industry. Moreover, I also lack multitasking skill that has been evident from my inability in performing more than one task simultaneously. In addition to these soft skills, I have also recognized absence of certain hard skills as well. For example, I do not have sufficient knowledge of using HRIS or performance management that are essential technologies in the human resources industry. In this regard, I also lack data analysis skills for extracting meaningful information from raw data and analyse them to understand their implications. Thus, alongside certain soft skills, I also need to acquire some technical skills and expertise.

From the personal analysis, I have been able to identify my strengths and weaknesses, which have provided me with the opportunity of understanding on which areas of development I need to focus. Despite the presence of various skills and core competencies, I would like to emphasize on different areas of development. First, I will focus on improving my time management skills for being able to handle more than one task as and when required. In this regard, I should learn about prioritizing such tasks based on their importance and deadline and accordingly manage the same (Grissom, Loeband Mitani, 2015). The second area of focus will be enhancing my positive attitude as I easily become confused, frustrated and panicked when things do not go as planned or difficulties arise. For this purpose, I will emphasize on gaining a calm and composed self for ensuring such positive attitude and handling the challenges as they arrive. Furthermore, I will focus on gaining multitasking skills and making quick decisions through practicing. This will be helpful for me to achieve desired outcomes despite critical situations. Along with these soft skills, I will further improve my leadership abilities for becoming a HR manager in the future. Here, I will already use my existing abilities and gather new ones like listening, empathy, conflict resolution, and others required for leading team members. Other than these, I will focus on acquiring some technical knowledge and experience on HRIS, data analysis and performance management. While both practical and theoretical knowledge will be required for understanding HRIS and performance management, experience of undertaking different projects will help me to gain data analysis skills.

Career Action Plan
This an individualized plan than can help in identifying career goals and undertake steps for pursuing such goals (Miller, 2017). Career action plan can be provided for helping me to attain short-term, medium-term and long-term goals based on the strengths, weaknesses and areas of development identified from the personal analysis section.

The action goals have been classified under three heads of short-term, medium-term and long-term. The short-term goals are attainable within three months, medium-term goals within six months and long-term goals within a year. Each of these goals have been formulated based on the SMART tool of specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time bound. As it can be observed that I have provided the short-term goals that I aim to achieve by designating a stipulated timeframe within which they are achievable. These include enrolling and completion of professional courses that generally have three to four months of duration for students and graduates. Thus, these goals are also realistic, measurable and specific. Furthermore, the medium-term goals are also time bound and specific as data analysis skills and knowledge about statistical tools need to be acquired within six months. These are crucial skills however, achievable and realistic in present employability scenario. They can also be measured with analysing how I apply them in future projects. Lastly, the soft skills have been determined as long-term goals with one year time frame as I might require some time in acquiring them.

Conclusion
The report aimed at carrying out a personal analysis of my skills, knowledge and experience for identifying strengths, weaknesses and competencies. In this regard, it identified my strengths as communication, interpersonal, adaptability, critical thinking, problem-solving, teamworking and MS office skills. It recognized my weaknesses in skills of time management, multitasking, positive attitude, quick decision-making, HRIS, performance management and data analysis. The areas of development determined were leadership skills, time management, data analysis and other technical skills. Based on this analysis, I was able to develop a suitable career action plan for achieving my desired goals categorized as short-term, medium-term and long-term.

Reference List
Ampountolas, A., Shaw, G. and James, S., 2019. Active learning to improve self-confidence and decision-making skills through the use of hotel simulation.Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Education, 31(3), pp.125-138.

Balcar, J., 2016. Is it better to invest in hard or soft skills?.The Economic and Labour Relations Review, 27(4), pp.453-470.
Grissom, J.A., Loeb, S. and Mitani, H., 2015. Principal time management skills:
Explaining patterns in principals’ time use, job stress, and perceived effectiveness. Journal of Educational Administration, 53(6), pp.773-793.
Matteson, M.L., Anderson, L. and Boyden, C., 2016. " Soft skills": A phrase in search of meaning. portal: Libraries and the Academy, 16(1), pp.71-88.
Miller, C.L., 2017. CAREER ACTION PLAN: Applying Analytical Thinking Skills in an Online Career Development Course. Career Planning & Adult Development Journal, 33(1). Ozsoy, D., 2014. University students’ in the examination of skills and attitudes of time management.Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 152, pp.358-361.
QinetiQ, 2021.Our company. [online] Available at: (Accessed 1 December 2021)

Appendices
CURRICULUM VITAE

First Name: LAURA DIANA
Surname:TODERICA
Date of birth: 14.04.1993
Email:
Nationality: Romanian
Sex: Female
Address:
Telephone:
Driving licence: Full UK

OBJECTIVE
Would like to gain the necessary experience to hopefully become Operations Manager of all services running across the platform.

EDUCATION
Buckinghamshire University London
From: February 2020
To: Present
• BA (Hons) Business and Management with Foundation Year

EMPLOYMENT HHISTORY
Company Name: Grove T5- Sofitel London Heathrow
Position: Public Area Supervisor
From: March 2017
To: February 2020

My duties and responsabilitieswas as directed by my managers and skills map.
• follow set PA routine from daily sheet
• maintain good communication and working relationships to ensure best practise
• action any feed back given from HOD or supervisor
• ensure that all guest requests are carried out
• able to use own initiative
• willing to learn from other team members
• pride in and enthusiasm for own work
• passion for customer service and standards
• passion for team success
• display a positive, friendly and informal manner with customers
• go beyond customer expectations in terms of service provide

Company Name: HRS-Recco Agency
Address: Falcon House 115-123, Staines Road, Hounslow TW3 3LL
Position: Housekeeper
From: October 2016
To: March 2017
My duties and responsibilities were as directed by my managers and skills map.

• ensure that structured cleaning schedule implemented by Floor Housekeeper was followed max 16 rooms/1 spring clean per day/corridor cleaning/hot spot
• achieve max 8 spot checks per month to company standard
• ensure that I have the correct amount of rooms-extra rooms or spring clean given for DND rooms
• report maintenance
• eye for detail
• organised
• role model, visibly demonstrate values
• self motivated
• contribute ideas to enhance the running of the department-team meetings

SOCIAL ABILITY AND SKILLS
• Microsoft Office
• Social Media Platforms
• Teamwork
• Organisation
• Adaptability
• Active listening
• Leadership
• Self motivated;
• Dealing with the public;
• Marketing orientated, business minded, very good negotiator.

Multi languages: Romanian -native speaker English-very good command

REFERENCE
1. Grove T5- Sofitel London Heathrow
Address: Terminal 5 London Heathrow Airport, Wallis Rd, Hounslow TW6 2GD
2. HRS-Recco Agency
Address: Falcon House 115-123, Staines Road, Hounslow TW3 3LL