4.01 Career Planning System

Know Yourself

In Shakespeare's Hamlet, the character Polonius gave this advice to his son: "To thine own self be true."

One of the most important objectives that you can accomplish at your age is to determine your personality traits, interests, and abilities and strongly consider them in planning educational and career choices. Setting goals based on personal interests will certainly lead to satisfaction and fulfillment in educational choices as well as on the job. A college education is very expensive and it is important to make an appropriate and realistic decision on a course of study before you enroll to avoid wasting time and money.

How do you determine your true interest? Think carefully about what you like and dislike. Think about what career you would like to pursue. Do you know enough about the expectations of the job to know if you would be a good match for a lifetime career? For example, just because you love animals does not mean that you should decide to become a veterinarian. There are other career options that involve working with animals that may be a better fit for you personally and just as rewarding. Investigate all the possibilities to find out what might the best fit for you.

A good way to get started on this self-analysis is to take an interest inventory. This kind of survey is designed to help you match your personal interests with various job descriptions. It is a good tool to help you get started looking at your personality profile in relation to educational planning and career interests. Of course a survey like this is helpful only if you are truthful with the input. Be true to yourself, especially when it comes to such an important decision as a future career.

"Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do." - Steve Jobs

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Plan for Success

"By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail." - Benjamin Franklin

In this unit you will be using the ACPS (Alabama Career Planning System) website which is part of the Alabama Career Information Network to build an online portfolio of information to help you make the best decisions possible for your future. The ACPS is available to all schools in Alabama for the purpose of providing students free access to career exploration tools. Using this kind of resource is a great place to start planning for success by first of all identifying the strongest personal interests, skills and values and matching them with specific educational and career paths.

The U.S. Department of Education has identified 16 national career clusters, which is a listing of occupations grouped under broad career fields. This list is also adopted by the Alabama State Department of Education as an organization tool to help students plan their program of study for a specific field and is based on research performed by the Alabama Department of Industrial Relations Alabama's labor market information agency and the Alabama Department of Education.

The ACPS provides links to specific information that will assist you in investigating career fields, college opportunities, and financial assistance to help you choose a career path and develop the supporting education plan that's right for you.

Every student in Alabama should establish a user account for this website in the eighth or ninth grade. It is very useful in planning educational choices each school year until graduation. It is a great resource for the creation of a personal online portfolio to store the useful information that you will acquire as you complete educational and career planning research and activities. Click on the Star icon to save research to your portfolio. The tasks are grade-level specific and allow you to build a portfolio of information and resources that you will need as you start to enter the work force (even on a part-time basis) and also will aid in your research for educational planning as it applies to your job search.

For a quick overview of the Alabama Career Planning System website, view this short video (2:04) which will show the welcome screen, the grade level tasks, and other activities to build your portfolio. It will certainly look familiar if you already have a user account through your school and are already in the process of gathering information.

If you do not have an existing account for the ACPS website, you will need to check with the counselor at your school to get the login information for your specific school system to complete the registration process for a new user as shown in the tasks for this lesson. You must have an activation code and/or State ID number to obtain free access for the site. The activities in the site are based on grade level so it is very important to register correctly. The tasks will provide step by step instructions and visuals so that you can easily set up your account and navigate the site.

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