We must identify our strengths and opportunities and resolve our weaknesses and threats to focus on our path and enrich our career planning and development. Focusing on a career now is not that easy, especially when advancement and specialization are evolving rapidly.
To maintain the connection between our skills and employability, it is essential that we frequently revisit our goals, identify our strengths and weaknesses, and update our plans accordingly. Many businesses employ a SWOT analysis, which was designed for career planning and aligning our goals. SWOT stands for Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, and Threat, focusing on internal and external factors.
Personal SWOT Analysis
If we were to imagine how a SWOT analysis looks like we can look at the headers below:
Strengths
- Adaption to new methodologies or evolutionary change is not a cumbersome task. This adds flexibility to my approach in any desired situation.
- Being organized has been a part of a trait from early childhood, imparted as part of discipline; I have proven myself to excel in active communication skills (speaking and writing), interpersonal skills, teamwork, and
- After witnessing turmoil and upheaved political scenarios, I have learned to keep myself self-motivated, innovative, and patient.
- Giving respect and appreciating other people’s opinions has earned me honesty and established credibility and integrity.
- Having an open-minded approach, despite belonging to a conservative family and tradition, has quickly allowed one to learn new traits and attributes. Furthermore, by being ambitious, the learning curve has no tangible boundaries.
- Belonging to a business-oriented family will empower you with practical decision-making and conflict resolution abilities. We believe with these characteristics in your personality, fortified by a degree in Business and Management, can make you a charismatic entrepreneur and display ethical leadership qualities.
Opportunities
- With a business-oriented family background, it is viable for you to take calculated risks with broader knowledge and perspective of the prevalent business environment.
- There are independence, freedom, respect for opinions, social networking opportunities, and community events as a volunteer.
- There are numerous opportunities to augment and fortify interpersonal skills; workshops are held to enhance training and leadership skills, special classes related to speech/talking platforms (like TED Talk), or opt for courses/classes and online tutoring.
- Getting feedback from classmates or teachers is much unbiased together with positive reinforcements.
Weaknesses
- We are experiencing specific learning difficulties, such as getting distracted, difficulty processing phonological comprehension in terms of accent, thus leading to weak learning competence and adding visual stress. This makes me a non-proactive person in public speaking and presentation, which are extempore in nature.
- Though being ambitious and patient, being fussy, obsessive, and pedantic makes one anxious and forces me to take unnecessary risks.
- Humor is not part of my attitude if you are not much well-versed with multitasking now, which adds reluctance to attitude and makes it difficult to comprehend visual representations (charts and graphs).
- Even though daydreaming has been proven good for intellectualism, you may still tend to drift away from the task.
- As earlier said, I exhibit impatience; it is simply because I am too concerned about my education, relevant qualification, and career (future employability).
Threats
- Cultural background difference does not lift your self-esteem, which relays into failure, missing deadlines, and honoring financial obligations, as blending into an alien culture is not quick to digest.
- Coming from a different part of the world, where it usually takes not much time to get acquainted, on the contrary, in the US, it takes time to get socially connected with other cultures. Understanding their language, way of living, and pace of life.
Action Plan
In line with David Kolb’s cycle of experiential learning and aligning with the SWOT analysis highlighted above, below-mentioned are the action points. Furthermore, Kolb’s 4-stage cycle of experiential learning advocates that effective beginners must engross fully in the apiece stage of the cycle feeling, reflection, thinking, and action to develop SMART Goals and improvise accordingly.
- Perform an extempore talk with confidence with the aid of a presentation on international business studies in front of a like-minded audience by the end of the year.
- Improve my English speaking and writing skills by adhering to auditory learning, at least 3 to 4 times a week on an ongoing basis.
- Create a wide range of contacts through social networking with different societies of other cultures by participating as volunteers in their respective community events at least once a quarter for two years to fill the communication gap and interact without any hesitancy.
- To fulfill my financial obligations by doing a part job as a research associate in my college for two After completing my studies, I intend to be an apprentice in a financial consulting firm for two years to earn experience and practical exposure. However, on a long-term horizon (5 to 10 years), I envision myself being in an executive management position, preferably financial investment industry, or starting my own business as a CEO.
Conclusion
Both conceptual and experiential learning have been significant learning methodologies within education (accounting, business, and management). Consequently, SMART goals should go hand-in-hand with the self-pointed-out SWOT to eradicate or minimize any impediments from an excerpt written above. Goals can either be short-term or long-term in nature, depend on the SWOT, but it should be kept in mind that the goals need to be an extension of SWOT and aligned. Furthermore, it is important to mention here that the end objective is the personal development leading to employability.
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