One-year action plan
Create a bullet list of the skills that you need to acquire or develop in order to be better positioned for careers in the fields you identified in Question 2. For each skill, specify a concrete action you can take sometime over the next year that will help you acquire or develop that skill. Be realistic about what you can accomplish, and remember that setting even two or three professional development goals per year is far better than ignoring your professional development entirely.
Keep in mind that the courses in your program can be a source of professional development opportunities. Think about the skills you may be acquiring or developing in your required courses, and when you are choosing electives consider whether they might provide you with learning opportunities that could help you in the future.
There are also many professional development resources available to you at or through Carleton University. You can:
- Register for any of the professional development workshops on our PD Event and Workshop Calendar
- Pursue an organized course of workshops in our Trajectories program.
- Take Mitacs Training workshops free of charge (if you are a Carleton student or postdoc)
- Book a career planning consultation with us at FGPA’s Grad PD
- Make an appointment for career counselling with Career Services
- Check out our professional development book reviews to find books to further your knowledge
- Browse the many books on professional development available through MacOdrum Library and especially O’Reilly for Higher Education
Example skills to acquire/develop, plus concrete actions
Public speaking: sign up for the Three Minute Thesis contest
Data management: attend the Library’s “Data Research Management” workshop
Entrepreneurship: read at last two books on entrepreneurship from O’Reilly for Higher Education or elsewhere
LinkedIn networking: attend a workshop by Career Services on “Networking Effectively Using LinkedIn”
Leadership: attend a workshop on leadership skills through Mitacs Training
The final step
Once you have completed this list, you should have the basics of an Individual Development Plan all ready to go! You just need to put it together in a single document as a final step.