Career Planning Resources

Unsure of what to make of career development or what it means to you, let CERIC's Guiding Principles of Career Development provide a foundation to help you make sense of career development and how to enhance all the outstanding work you are doing both inside and outside of your studies towards your career goal.

Visit the CERIC's website to learn more about the guiding principles, how they are anchored in research and tailored guides to help reframe the principles from your perspective.

https://ceric.ca/publications/guiding-principles-of-career-development/

Career development is the lifelong process of managing learning, work, leisure, and transitions in order to move toward a personally determined and evolving preferred future.

Career literacy is the capacity to acquire and manage the knowledge and skills required to understand career-related information, develop self-awareness of one’s values and strengths, and make informed decisions about career pathways and goals, all while considering one’s individual context and background

Career planning is an ongoing process through which a person sets career goals and identifies ways of achieving them.

Professional development is the structured, continuous learning and skill development, outside of academic coursework and the thesis to enhance the competitiveness of an individual in-market, specifically transferable or non-technical skills.

https://www.ulethbridge.ca/career-bridge/career-foundations

How do you know where to go, if you do not know where you are starting and what you are starting with?

By practicing meaningful reflection, you can examine your experience, skills, goals, values, and context as you work to create a career and academic plan that supports your journey. It is important to start building your reflective practices early and often to capture your experiences and insights as they happen and for future use. Below you will find more information about reflection and its importance to the career and academic journey, along with reflective models to help frame your thoughts.

SGS Professional Development has adopted the Canadian Association of Graduate Studies (CAGS) framework of professional skills that support graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. 

The professional skills and descriptions provide a foundation for success in academic and non-academic roles, and further, these are the skills typically requested by funding organizations.

The framework was researched and developed by a team of experts, in collaboration with CAGS, as part of the Task Force on Excellence in Graduate Programming to foster a national understanding of the non-technical skills that graduate students should acquire and develop.

•Professional Communication

•Employs complex communication skills in a manner that contributes to organizational, provincial, and national productivity.

•Effectively communicates research to a diverse audience in written, spoken, visual, and other forms.

•Demonstrates effective writing, publication, and public speaking skills

•Leadership

•The capacity to create and articulate a shared vision while motivating support for the vision and empowering others to achieve excellence

•Demonstrate the ability to think critically and problem solve, innovate, and effectively manage change, respond well and adapt to changing environments.

•Demonstrate a capacity to guide motivate and influence others to contribute to organizational, provincial or federal goals

•Demonstrate an awareness of leadership in team settings and the ability to collaboratively work towards the achievement of mutual team goals.

•The ability to problem-solve, innovate, respond well and adapt to changing environments and influence others to adapt to changing environments.

•Interpersonal

•The capacity to collaboratively produce and share knowledge and innovation.

•The ability to strategically work towards common goals and visions that impact organizational, provincial or national efficacy.

•Demonstrate the capacity to acknowledge and respect diversity.

•Ability to develop, manage, and maintain effective partnerships and relationships among colleagues and other stakeholders.

•Capacity to apply effective interpersonal skills such as active listening, diplomacy, and negotiating in appropriate contexts.

•Project Management

•The capacity to create and undertake diverse projects and effectively manage and monitor projects and/or programs including people.

•Equity, Diversity & Inclusion

•Demonstrate the ability to utilize frameworks that aid the understanding of cultural, racial, gender, ability, sexual orientation, and other differences and similarities.

•Ability to distinguish one's own cultural, racial, gender, ability, sexual orientation and other differences and similarities, influences and an awareness of one's own ways of making meaning, and of one's judgements, emotions, and physical sensations, and the capacity to bridge these differences in research design and varying organizational contexts (bridging).

•Teaching and/or Mentorship

•Demonstrate the ability to explain complex and/or ambiguous concepts relative to specialized content or skill areas in organizational contexts.

•Ability to adjust instructional content, methods and mentoring activities to match varying learning styles, abilities and diverse backgrounds.

•Capacity to apply sound pedagogical principles including assessment, design, delivery, implementation, and evaluation to various organizational contexts.

The best way to stay on track and make the most of your time at ULethbridge is to set goals. 

As graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, the time you have here is limited and the time available to you to spend outside of academia is limited. Ensuring you are working toward meeting your career and academic goals as part of your journey will provide a cushion for a more supported transition to the next stage of your journey. 

When in doubt, connect with a Career Counsellor, Career Coach, Supervisor, etc. and discuss the best approach to goal-setting that fits your context.

To get started, consider these two different ways of thinking about goals and goal-setting.

Your professional brand is how you communicate your skills, expertise, experiences, and accomplishments to others. Learn how to develop professional materials, research profiles, online presence, and supporting documents that help showcase the value of your graduate education and support your career goals.

https://ceric.ca/publications/guiding-principles-of-career-development/

Develop meaningful professional relationships that support your academic, research, and career goals. Networking can help you build connections, learn from others, explore opportunities, identify mentors, and become an active member of your professional community.