Planning your career

Developing self-awareness is a powerful step in shaping a meaningful career. When you understand your values, strengths, challenges, passions, and interests, you begin to see how these qualities influence your decisions and open up new possibilities.

This awareness allows you to reflect on how you’ve grown, speak confidently about your goals, and clarify the kind of impact you want to make in the world. It also helps you manage your wellbeing during times of uncertainty and build a strong, authentic professional identity that evolves with you.

Use the activities below to develop your self-awareness.

• Determine your values to understand how they guide your decisions and help you find work that feels meaningful. Explore your values using the Mindtools Values Exercise.
• Identify your strengths and challenges to know what you're great at and where you can grow. Explore your strengths using the VIA Character Strengths Test or MBTI for Careers.
• Identify your professional skills that set you apart and apply across industries. Explore your skills using the Serious Job Seeker Skills Exploration.
• Find career paths that align with what you enjoy and care about. Explore your interests using the Holland Code Career Quiz or Ikigai Test.
• Understand how you make choices, this shapes your leadership and teamwork. Find your decision-making style using the Truity Decision Style Test.
• Recognise the people, environments and experiences that uplift you to help you build confidence. Reflect on mentors, role models, and supportive communities that inspire and support your growth. Strengthen your self-belief by celebrating achievements, practising positive self-talk, seeking examples of success from people just like you, and setting achievable goals that stretch your potential.
• Understand your purpose and meaning to discover how your career can reflect your values, unique skills, and passions to contribute to something bigger.

The self-assessment tools linked on this page are designed to support personal reflection and career exploration. They are not prescriptive or diagnostic, and results should be interpreted as starting points for deeper self-understanding. Always consider your unique context and seek guidance from career professionals when needed.

Based on this self-understanding, you can then …

• Consider the broad array of career pathways and opportunities available to you.
• Begin mapping out achievable, adaptable career goals.
• Engage in networking, mentoring and industry opportunities that broaden your connectedness.
• Equip yourself with current and unbiased labour market information.
• Understand the qualifications, skills and mindset required to succeed in your career goals
• Begin building a positive professional identity.

Once you’ve clarified your career direction, the next step is managing the transition from where you are now to where you want to be. This phase is about taking action, staying hopeful, being open to possibilities, being ready for unexpected opportunities or challenges, and developing resilience to thrive in a changing world. 

Set Goals

Set a series of adaptable, short-term SMART goals that lead to your long-term career goal. Setting achievable goals allows you to sustain an ongoing sense of accomplishment which energises you, keeps you motivated throughout your career, and provides reassurance you are still heading in the right direction.

Effective Job-Seeking Techniques

• Use targeted strategies like informational interviews, tailored applications, and leveraging LinkedIn.
• Attend local and virtual career events. Some good websites to start looking for events are Careers Event and Your Career. 
• Attend career webinars and learning events hosted by community organisations or professional bodies.
• Stay open to unexpected opportunities. The Happenstance Theory (Krumboltz, 1999) reminds us that chance events can shape our careers in powerful ways. Be ready to act when an opportunity knocks, and don’t be afraid to create your own chance events by broadening your support and professional networks, attending career events, getting involved in professional organisations and volunteering.
• Adopt adaptability. A sudden, unexpected hurdle that stops us achieving concrete goals can invoke a sense of failure. Be willing to adapt to the situation and respond with flexibility when unexpected events strike.

Successfully secure and maintain employment

• Be interview-ready by preparing responses and researching the organisation.
• Build workplace skills like time management, collaboration and feedback-seeking through volunteer and community experiences.
• Be positive. Confidence and optimism help you navigate new environments and build strong relationships.
• Recognise the influence of Chaos. Careers are rarely linear. Twists and turns can and will happen, it’s how you respond that matters. Watch Jim Bright's Chaos Theory of Careers Explained interview.

Embrace the changing nature of life and work roles

• Stay curious and keep learning. Upskilling, reskilling, and juggling shifting priorities are part of lifelong career learning. Why not check out a UniSQ short course! 
• Reflect regularly on your goals and values to ensure alignment with your path.
• Accept uncertainty as part of growth. 

Throughout your career, reflect on your experiences through the lens of curiosity, acceptance of change, adaptability and persistence.

Consider how your understanding of yourself has changed as a result of each experience.

Use these reflections to explore future opportunities, change direction with confidence, overcome challenges, and manage the next transition!