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From the course by The State University of New York

Strategic Career Self-Management

154 ratings

The State University of New York

Strategic Career Self-Management

154 ratings

Course 1 of 4 in the Specialization Career Brand Management

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, in the current economy, Americans shift jobs every 4-5 years, which translates into 8-10 job transitions, including several career changes, over one’s life time. With competition for jobs on the rise, a person’s continuing employability and career success are increasingly defined by his or her mastery of individual career development and the ability to effectively "manage oneself" (P. Drucker). In this course, you will learn how to think strategically and professionally about your career self-management. Through this course you'll develop an objective, external view of your marketable skills as a solid foundation for building a strong career brand. In particular, you'll be able to: - explain why developing a protean and boundaryless career perspective based on transferable (portable) skills is advantageous for continuing employability and career growth; - design your portable skills portfolio, identify and examine critically important competencies underpinning your transferable skills, and analyze your career self-management competency gaps; - increase self-awareness, pinpoint your career goals, and envision your future work self; - recognize the central role of self-management for developing transferable, marketable, skills and create a customized self-management information system (Career Development Lab) for ongoing personal development and professional growth; - conduct a thorough, competency-based job analysis in your area of interest and examine practices of evidence-based, data-driven competitive employee selection; -implement your newly developed skills for crafting effective selection criteria statements and refining your job applications.

From the lesson

Course review

Watch Course Review video, take the end-of-the-course survey and the final quiz. You instructors for this week are Amy Giaculli and Val Chukhlomin.

What have we learned in this course?5:36

Meet the Instructors

Dr. Valeri Chukhlomin
Professor
SUNY Empire State College
Dr. Michele Forte
Assistant Professor, SUNY Empire State College
Community and Human Services
Dr. Kymn Harvin Rutigliano
Assistant Professor
SUNY Empire State College
Dr. John M. Beckem II
Assistant Professor of Finance and Management Studies
State University of New York, Empire State College
Dr. Tonka Jokelova
Coordinator of Curriculum and Instructional Design
SUNY Empire State College
Amy Giaculli
Assessment Specialist
SUNY Empire State College

Hello again, I'm Amy Giaculi.

In this final presentation,

we'll briefly review the main learning outcomes of the course.

The goal of this specialization is to help you create, manage, and

communicate a strong career brand for your professional growth and career success.

A Career Brand is perception of someone's work-related capabilities and

expertise by various audiences, most notably employers.

Career Brands have two common components, these are functional or

skill component and emotional or image component.

In the first course of the specialization, we focused on the skills component.

To begin, we suggested that you should develop a skill-based view of yourself,

with particular attention to transferable or portable skills.

Then we asked you to conduct an inventory of your most valuable skills

to create a portable skills portfolio.

Managing one's skills portfolio is not an easy undertaking.

As Peter Drucker, the father of contemporary management wrote,

managing oneself is an evolution in human affairs, it requires new and

unprecedented things from the individual.

In affect, it demands that each knowledged worker think and

behave as a chief executive officer.

Following Drucker's advice,

we suggested that you should adhere to a long-term strategic approach

to managing your skills portfolio, acting like the CEO of Enterprise You.

As a CEO, you must design and implement the best possible strategy

that will bring you from your current skills portfolio to where you want to be.

To do so, we suggested that you should learn about analyzing careers and

skills, identifying skills development needs and

sharpening those skills that you decide to add to your portfolio.

To analyze skills in your portfolio,

you got familiar with the competency analysis framework.

In particular, you learned that a person's level of skill acquisition can only be

accessed in regard to a particular job where the skill is required.

You also learned that competency analysis can reveal the person's level of mastery

in performing critical tasks for the job, and it can also help you identify gaps

in knowledge, skills, abilities and attitudes.

To practice competency analysis, you applied it to career building skills.

As a result, you identified career self-management competencies,

including job search, job analysis, self-management, self-marketing, and

networking, amongst others.

Those are the competencies that you are expected to master

as a result of taking all three courses in this specialization.

You also identified the competency gaps that you need to address and eliminate.

To address competency gaps, one needs to identify the root causes and

examine underpinning attitudes, abilities, knowledge and elementary skills.

In the course,

you conducted a competency gap analysis of your self-management competency.

The underpinning knowledge that you gained includes learning about personality

traits, abilities, metacognition and self-regulation.

The foundational skills that you acquired are self-strategy and

self-directive learning skills.

The behavioral components include motivation and self-belief.

After you've examined and addressed your career self management competency gaps

you are able to engage in develop your career goals and

envisioning your future work self.

Most importantly in terms of your future skills portfolio.

This is where a dream job can come into the picture.

But to make the dream a reality the skills in your portfolio must be marketable.

For this purpose you learned how to develop an objective

external view of your skills portfolio by taking an employers external perspective.

Coming from the employers perspective you learned how to conduct a job analysis and

competency mapping for a particular job.

Then we asked you to change gears and prepare a detailed selection criteria

statement for the position that you previously designed.

As a result you learned how to meet expectations by assuring a prospective

employer that your skills are the perfect match for the position.

As the final step in this course you learned how to create and

use a selection dashboard.

This simple tool helps evaluate the candidates entire skills portfolio

in a competitive selection context.

You can immediately begin using this tool for your ongoing job hunt.

But wait, in the next course we'll show you how you can use this and

other tools for further career brand development and self coaching.

There's more to come.

In the following courses, you'll continue your journey towards career total fitness.

In course two, you'll learn how to implement career self-management

competencies to build and document marketable skills.

Course three will take care of showcasing your shiny new portfolio

to prospective employers.

As summarized by Shaffer & Zalewski, theorists and

practitioners both provide the following advice for career builders.

Maintain your own employability.

Develop capabilities to acquire new skills on your own, and

be a self-directed learner.

Increase your human capital by developing transferable skills.

Learn how to document and communicate new skills.

Engage in self marketing, be proactive and

develop a positive attitude toward self improvement.

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