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Choose one to three professions, positions, workplaces, careers or jobs that interest you.

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Create a table to rank your career interests based on how well they align with your personal situation and interests. Use a large sheet of paper or a whiteboard for this task. See the example below. The areas to evaluate are:

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• Society, trends and the environment, including general employment trends and emerging sectors and new professions. How well do these match your career interests?

• Skills, competencies, knowledge and experience. How well do those of the career interest match yours?

• Personality and personal traits, such as health, introversion or responsibility. How well does the profession, position, workplace, career or job match your traits? For example, how well does it match your health or stress levels? What personal traits are sought for the position?

• Values and culture. What are the values and culture of the profession, position, workplace, career or job? Do these align with your own?

• Lifestyle and life situation. Does the profession, position, workplace, career or job match with your lifestyle? For example, work-life balance, working hours, workplace location, income, financial situation, studies and family circumstances.

• Attractiveness of the profession, position, workplace, career or job in general, and how well it matches your own interests, such as personal goals and identity.

• Development support: Is there any support available to help you develop in your profession, position, workplace, career or job? For example, are there any formal education or informal training opportunities, or mentoring schemes?

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Add any other relevant elements.

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Search for information on the three professions, positions, workplaces, careers or jobs in all the areas to be evaluated. Add headings for each profession, position, workplace, career or job next to the table and add information about each area to be evaluated for each job on sticky notes. Place these near the table to enable quick comparison of the information. You can use sticky motes of different colours for each position.

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Find the same information for each area of your life. You can find this information in previous phases of the Career Compass toolkit, as well as in this phase. Write this information on sticky notes headed 'Me' and arrange them around the table in the same way as you did for jobs.

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Evaluate how well each area matches your personal situation, interests and capabilities by allocating a number between 1 and 5, where 5 indicates the best match, while 1 indicates the worst.

 

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Calculate the total for each profession, position, workplace, career or job, and then add these totals to the bottom row. These totals will automatically generate a ranking of the alternatives.

 

 

Review the results. Are you happy with them? Reconsider each alternative and think about any barriers to pursuing these career options and how feasible they would be. What, if anything, has changed?

 

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Select one of the alternatives and create an action brief, a journey map, or another planning tool for it.

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