Questions
- What are your lifestyle goals?
- Does a career in IT fit with your lifestyle goals?
- What is your future career goal?
- How ready are you for an IT job?
- What do you need to do to get ready?
- What actions will you need to take to reach your career goals?
- What steps do you need you need take to manage your career?
When I was a kid, I dreamed of being a superman to save this world and help poor people those who do not have power, rights and are maltreated. Growing up, I realized that superman with super power does not exist but only people with brilliant minds, talents, sharpen skills and warm hearts that can do meaningful things. During my past two years, I have learnt from my experience and observation of BenSmile, RMIT CAN, LIN and KOTO that traditional charity is not effective any more. Fortunately, social entrepreneurship is the answer; however, it needs to apply IT and IS in order to generate more positive result for the community. Therefore, one of my future career goals is to become a founder and CEO of an international social entrepreneurship which helps poor people through training and job opportunities.
In my personality, I care about health, nutrition and environment. Thus, my first lifestyle goal is to keeping myself, family, people in my organization and my community healthy with a scientific, practical exercise and nutrition regime. This also leads to my second career goal which is becoming a CEO or SEO of a restaurant that successfully applies IS and IT in management and operation. Secondly, I want to be able to help at least one new individual everyday through my organization and my charity. Thirdly, through any actions of mine and my organization, I want it to contribute to the protection and conservation of the environment. To illustrate, my organization will use IT applications to reduce paper work and automatic power off when necessary. Lastly, I want to have time with my family and my friends whom are very important to me.
This image illustrates briefly how my personality effect my career goals and my lifestyle goals
Of course, a career in IT also meets my lifestyle goals as I understand which path in IT I should go so that I also can fulfill my goals with the application of IT. I use IT as a tool in order to speed up the process and performance of my organization and community in everyday life.
Currently, I equip myself with basic IT knowledge and skills from courses at RMIT. This means that I will have to learn additional knowledge on database management, web development and ERP from outside courses and self-study. Also I will have to gain more experience from actual implementing what I have learnt into projects and works. This means that I will join more social work and projects in department of my major. Additionally, I will ask students who are taking or finished intern for their experience and advice on what I should prepare in advance. However, with an “ongoing and willing to learn” mind, I strongly believe that I am ready for an IT job.
In order to reach my career goals, there are four main actions. Firstly, I need to enrich my knowledge not only in business (law, IS, finance, marketing, HR and management) but also knowledge in nutrition, health and hygiene. Secondly, I will gain an extensive experience in working for international enterprises and social entrepreneurship. In detail, I will begin with starting position then I will get promotion to CEO or SEO. Thirdly, I will travel to many countries in the world to take risks of holding different responsibilities in different nations, to learn new technologies, their application and especially their taste and experience in making dishes. Lastly and importantly, networking, interacting and strengthen bonds with people from many regions will help me to expand my knowledge, learn perspectives from different nations and explore new things that I have never known.
The following image shows my briefly neccessary steps in order to to achieve my career goals. These steps wil be changed and improved frequently.
It is important to manage my career. There are main three steps that I have learnt and experienced as following:
- Understand myself. This is a complicated process and it requires an ongoing and long-term activities and actions. For myself, first, I choose to do what I like which is studying and joining many clubs such as Business Club, Environment club, CAN, Design Club and SIFE. After a period of a quarter or a year, I look back and reflect on myself whether this is what I want to do for my career. The answer was no. I did not want to just make my life busy but I only want to have time to understand and reflect on myself more. Then, I started to leave clubs to find quiet places to think of myself and other people and to mediate. Also, I spend more time on social work to find out my value, my passion for life and how my major can help me to pursue it. At last, I explore who I am – an easy question with a struggling answer.
- Plan my career. According to my experience, this needs a large investment in time in order to fully develop a career planning. For me, I learnt from career workshop by Phoenix Ho and Nguyen Huu Tri (Awake Your Power) some essential steps and tips. Especially from the two books: “I am gifted, so are you!” (Adam Khoo) and “7 habits of highly effective people” (Stephen Covey), I have learnt tools, techniques and models to assist my career planning. It is essential that I explore all of my alternative ways and study their feasibilities. I apply feasibility study model which I learnt from Business Analysis course and “Problem Solving 101” (Ken Watanabe). The important point is to have a closest friend and career consultant to feedback your plan. However, it all depends on each person decisions for the planning as it reflects their personalities.
- Track my career path. This means that I will look back what I have done yearly or semi-yearly to make sure I am on the right track or if I need to modify it. I also usually have my closest friend and career consultant to feedback on me if I am on the right track. Tracking my career path is not easy as when we are working, we rarely have time to stop to reflect on our paths. That is why I usually spend my whole Sunday or even Saturday with my girlfriend, my family or myself to reflect on my career path and choice.
To me, career development is a recurrence process which will hardly ends and it occurs as the following cycle:
Reference:
Dev, S n.a., image, Living with Cerebral Palsy, n.a., viewed 14 July 2011, <http://www.livingwithcerebralpalsy.com/diabetes-food.php>
Geopaul, 2008, image, iStockphoto, 6 December 2008, viewed 14 July 2011, <http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-7962690-green-earth.php?st=f09751f>
Illustrious, 2008, image, iStockphoto, 19 April 2008, viewed 14 July 2011, < http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-illustration-5915619-family-and-friends-holding-hands.php?st=1917934>
Mahesh, 2006, image, StrangeHorizon, 31 August 2006, viewed 14 July 2011, < http://www.strangehorizons.com/reviews/2006/08/superman_.shtml>
Sorbetto, 2008, image, 21 August 2008, viewed 14 July 2011, <http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-illustration-6996557-health-heart-icon.php>
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