The 5 Components of a Career Development Plan

Your Week 1 Lesson explains the 5 components of a career development plan: Objective – Milestone – Obstacles – Solutions – Goal.

Your Week 1 Lesson and readings further explain the five SMART goals.

For this Assignment, you are to create your 1-3-5 year career development plan using these 5 components of a Career Development Plan with a timeline of SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely).

Please consider your needs/plans for further learning/professional development in preparing for this Assignment. What do you anticipate needing, and how will you acquire it? If you want to skip the 5 years part and project that point farther to 7 or 10 (i.e., 1-3-10) because that works better for you, that is fine. Just explain how your plan is structured. Also, consider how social service/giving back to community figures in your future career aspirations — why this is/is not important to your career plans. (We will cover this aspect further in Lesson 3 but touch on it as a planning point.)

GUIDANCE FOR CONSTRUCTING YOUR PLAN.

Many career development plan templates are available on the Internet for laying out your plan components. How you are most comfortable with your thought process and planning approach is what you should use. However, regardless of your personal design approach, you must use the above 5 components of the Career Development Plan and incorporate SMART goals. A table approach such as the sample shown in the Week 1 Lesson is useful for organizing a plan.

REPORTING YOUR PLAN — PREPARING THIS ASSIGNMENT — POWERPOINT PRESENTATION – READ THE RUBRIC

When you have designed your career development plan, prepare a PowerPoint that presents your plan in an organized fashion. Imagine that you are giving this PPT presentation to a group of business people at a job fair. This should be attractive, engaging, and easy to follow on the slides. What is your story? How do you explain (or illustrate) your SMART goals and hit each component of your plan within your timeline in an organized, interesting way? The slides should be attractive but not cluttered. The additional explanatory narrative must accompany the slides in the speaker notes section under each slide or in the alternative by your audio or video accompanying the PPT. All your information does not have to be ON the slides. Your presentation is a combination of pertinent key points on the slides with an explanatory narrative in your speaker’s notes.

PPT Specifications: 

• Title slide with your name, title, course, date, university
• Agenda slide following title slide that outlines the presentation
• References slide at the end with source citations in APA citation format
• Research must be included using credible sources — not Wikipedia, not other sites of poor credibility. Use required readings.
• At least 8 to 10 substantive slides (excluding title and reference slides)
• Avoid excessive quotations — if used, an in-text citation of the source must be provided with the quote
• Professional slide appearance/graphics, pictures, color, etc. — but avoid these interfering with the readability of slides. Keep audience viewing in mind.