SGPsychStud: Career Planning for a Psychological Career (Part 2)

After you have identified your KSAOs, the next things to identify are your strengths and weaknesses in those KSAOs.

KSAOs of a Psychologist
(Copyright of SGPsychStuff)

Of the KSAOs, which are those that you are good or great at?  Which do you lack currently?  

You have to ask yourself these honest questions.

After you have identified your strengths and weakness, it is time to do something about it!!

But how are you going to do it? 

Image credit: http://bethechangecareers.com/the-process/

Here are 4 steps to doing it!

Step 1 : Knowing Yourself

Before moving on you should know who you are as a person, and what you are good at.  This include things like your learning styles, values at work, personality traits, interests, and skills that you are done at.

Here are some links which you can use to learn to learn about yourselves.
[Credit: Some of these weblinks are provided from http://mystudio.bethechangecareers.com/resources/resources-2/]

Learning Style:  VARK Questionnaire
Career Values:  Value-Sort Activity (RMIT website)
Personality Traits link 1:  Jung Type Test 
Personality Traits link 2:  IPIP Big-Five Factor Markers
Interests:  O*NET Interest Profiler
Strengths:  Motivated Skills Inventory

Step 2: Exploring Your Options

Once you understand your personality traits, interests, strengths, and values,  you should start to explore some options and do some research about the industry and the jobs available.  There are mainly three things to do:

1. Occupational Research:  This involves doing some research on the occupation, on what it entails.  It is pretty much like finding out about the job description.  This can be done by browsing the job search sites or companies that offer jobs you are interested in.  Another reference website you can look at is  O*NET Online.
2. Knowing the industry trends:  Knowing what is happening in the industry for the last 10 years will be beneficial in understanding whether this career is something that you would do.  I would advise that you go for career talks in your university or educational institute, and network with some professionals in the industry or the Singapore Psychological Society.  You can also learn about the trends through the different Facebook pages.
3. Knowing your career options:  This will be useful to know the other jobs that you may be interested in.  This could be based on your personality traits, values and interests as mentioned above.  Knowing this will be beneficial if you wish to have some form of a career start or career change in a different industry, other than psychology. 

The main purpose for Steps 1 and 2 is to build up your knowledge regarding yourself and the career choice.  Once you have obtained this knowledge, you can then proceed to plan and to take action to work towards your choice of having a psychological-related career!!

To be continued.. See Career Planning for a Psychological Career (Part 3)...