InfoQuest! Information Services

Career Planning

by Terry Brainerd Chadwick for
Plan is Not a Four Letter Word
Oregon Chapter Special Libraries Association
September 28, 2001


The Skills of an Information Specialist

Problem Clarification
Organization & Synthesizing Information
Lateral Thinking.
Looking for Context and Patterns
Donna Shaver, 1992


The career planning programs of the 21st century are more than just job boards. Almost all of the really good programs have people come to a knowledge of what they want to do now by seriously examining who they were and what they most liked to do in the past. They have you examine your interests, values, skills, and traits before even considering looking for a particular "job". Once you have gone through all of this you learn how to pull all of these things together into success stories rather than bullet points to sell yourself to a potential employer.

These career planing programs also emphasize doing information interviews before applying for a job: interviewing lots of people in lots of companies in industries in whch you have an interest to find out how the jobs and companies meet and fulfill the core values you identified in the earlier exercises. Only after you go through all of these steps, do you actually go looking for a job.

The type of questions and exercies that most of these modern career development and life planning programs use, include:

  • What have your interests been throughout different times of your life?


  • What kind of people do you like to be around?


  • What work environment do you function best in? (e.g., level of responsibility, humor, authority, pace, creativity, independence, team approach, etc.)


  • What life values are most important to you? (e.g., family, freedom, money, spirituality, self-growth, meaningful work, etc.)


  • What working conditions are most important to you? (e.g., city or suburban, close restaurants, dress code, work space, hours, amenities, etc.)


  • What compensation do you a) need and b) want?


  • What are your skill sets? (e.g., I can...)


  • What are your traits? (e.g., I am...)
    Drawn from the CareerMakers program.

The following page has a number of career planning and other career and job-related resources.


NEXT

Copyright 2001 InfoQuest! Information Services
Last updated: September 28, 2001
Terry Brainerd Chadwick
InfoQuest! Information Services
2324 NW Johnson St., Ste.4
Portland, OR 97210-5221
tbchad@tbchad.com
http://www.tbchad.com
Phone: 1-503-228-4023