SECTION V: Career
Planning and Development
The advice given in this handbook
concerning knowing yourself, setting
goals and understanding the job market should stay
with you even after you successfully secure a job. More than a job searching guide, this book aims at
helping you plan your long-term career development. You are advised to set your eyes beyond just a job
on hand but on your career in the decades to come.
Everybody knows that leaving school does not mean the end of the learning. While our fathers may still
believe in an ‘iron rice bowl’ or some sorts of lifetime job, we are well aware that in our rapidly changing
society such things barely exist and what we learn at school is hardly sufficient to meet the demands
in the job market. Once you start a working life, difficulties you meet on a daily basis will remind you of
your own inadequacies and the need to explore new knowledge. Time moves on, so should you. Keep
rethinking and revising your own career plan. The advice you get from this handbook can be applied
repeatedly but with enhanced precision in different stages of your working life and will be a handy
reference when you keep redefining your life goals through the years you live.
Career planning is a lifelong process to help you understand yourself and the external world, and to keep
revising your personal goals accordingly. Some planning skills are involved. The model below explains
how to manage the course of your career:
Personal qualities & Personality
Your personal qualities and your personality form the basis
of your career planning as they determine the direction and
the effectiveness of your career plans. Examples of personal
qualities are: willingness to try new things, passion for work,
and the ability to work independently.
Career planning Skills
Abilities at work
1. Self-management
1. Subject and profession
specific abilities
Your self-appraisal and selfknowledge, e.g., values, abilities,
personality, interests, work/life
balance.
Mastering, Refer to the specialized knowledge
displaying and abilities in specific areas of work,
and using including professional qualifications, rules
2. Ability to build a career
The ability of self-guidance and
self-development in a working
life, e.g., to search for and make
use of information in the labour
market, hold on to chances for
employment and learning, and to
build professional ties.
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Source: Bridgstock, Ruth S.
(2009) The graduate attributes
we've overlooked: enhancing
graduate employability through
career management skills.
Higher Education Research and
Development, 28(1), pp. 31-44.
SECTION V: Career Planning and Development
of industries, and the latest technological
applications and their regulations.
2. Generic skills in the
workplace
The more generalized skills required
in different positions across different
industries, including the skills of
technological application, and for both
written and oral communication.
Note from the diagram above that the individual plays a central role in the entire course of career
planning. Understanding of an individual’s distinct qualities and personality forms the core basis on
which to build abilities for work (including both industry-specific abilities and generic skills) with the career
planning skills that would eventually lead the person to his personal goals.
As the term itself suggests, industry specific abilities refer to the professional knowledge and skills
required for a certain post in a certain industry. Young people fresh to the job market are usually spirited
and are prepared to make a mark in the workplace. However, what you learned at school is often not
entirely applicable to real life situations. Hence, regardless of the industry you join, you have to keep
working hard and improving to enhance both your knowledge and your skills.
The so-called generic skills in the job market are a broad category, of which the most important are
interpersonal communication skills. These include the abilities to express yourself clearly and to build
interpersonal networks. Don’t underestimate the importance of these soft skills, for they can directly
affect your career. A Chinese proverb says ‘favourable natural elements, geographical locations, and
harmonious human relations’ are all necessary to achieve success. Here harmonious human relations
refer to how you get on with others. A good interpersonal network will help you tremendously in ways
you hardly notice. You may receive veteran advice that would save you from troubles from senior
members of your industry whom you make friends with; or you may get a helping hand to deliver you out
of distress from co-workers who find you likable. Even people from a rival company in the same trade,
who are conventionally regarded as arch enemies, may help you if you could share useful information
or join hands to explore new opportunities. There are also cases where such connections would open
up opportunities of furthering one’s career in another organization. So how should you manage your
interpersonal relations? This will depend on your continual exploration and the experience you gain in
your life. Other than interpersonal relations, generic skills in the job market also include management
skills, abilities to analyze and organize things, to allocate resources, and to set and implement goals.
The learning process we discuss here may be long and tireless, but should not be intimidating. To start
with, open yourself to challenges and make the best of every chance to learn. As Aristotle famously said,
‘Learning is a natural pleasure’. Continuous learning would not only help the course of your career, but
would benefit your personal growth.
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SECTION V: Career Planning and Development
What follows is a guide known as CROPS, which teaches you how to keep an open mind as you start
lifelong learning and engage in your own career planning and development.
'C' stands for Creativity. When you plan your career, you have to take your unique personal qualities
into account to build your own life. During the process of career planning, you should refer to different
kinds of information and other people’s plans. However, do not simply adopt other people’s choices. You
need to set your personal goals according to your uniqueness. Only by so doing can you have career
plans that suit and please you.
'R' stands for Responsibility. You have to be able and prepared to be responsible for your own career
planning. Without a doubt, you will come across many forked paths on your career journey. Your success
depends on what paths you choose, the pace you choose to tread them and how you manage the problems
you encounter on the way. Your choice today will be your result tomorrow; you are in total charge of this
result. You are capable of managing your career.
'O' stands for Open. Keep your mind open to new things and challenges. Don’t be afraid of changes,
for they may bring pleasant surprises. Some people hate changes and do not understand that every
challenge could also be an opportunity. For instance, Mr. Wong works at a trading company and is in
charge of customer data. When he joined this company, he had used d-base to save all his customer data
and transaction records. He has no desire to shift to Excel, an application widely praised for its efficiency
since its launch. Because of his fear of changes, he is reluctant to try new things. People like this are
sometimes dubbed the dinosaurs, whose demise is a sealed deal.
'P' stands for Perceptive. This means to stay attuned to the changes in society, keep abreast with it, and
continue to enhance yourself according to the demands of the market. If you act only when those changes
have started affecting your life, it may be well too late. Think of how many typists have lost their job because
they failed to pick up computer word-processing in time? How many talented designers got stuck in a twodimensional space because they failed do something when three-dimensional design is set to prevail? We
must again stress the importance of continuing education. You sure understand continuing education is part
of the current tendency in our community. From the CEO of a listed company to an office assistant, there
is always room for improvement and development, and a suitable way to learn something continuously, for
anyone from any walks of life. Not to advance is to fall back. Bear in mind this sage adage.
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SECTION V: Career Planning and Development
The 'S' that comes last means staying Self-aware. The first part of this handbook covers ways to selfunderstanding. Self-awareness here refers to your strengths, weaknesses, interests, goals and so on that
will change as you grow. Hence, keeping a habit of reflecting on yourself will help you understand yourself
better and revise your career and life goals accordingly.
On finishing reading Part One of this Handbook, you are now probably a planner of
your own career and life. We wish you a very happy working life!
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SECTION V: Career Planning and Development