Developing personal career strategy - MBA Student Exchange

APPENDIX A
PAST EXPERIENCES
For the purposes of career decision making and planning, the most relevant past
experiences to examine are our previous jobs. In addition, it is also important to
examine our experiences in college (classes, projects, etc.), practicum’s, community
service, and/or internships. For each of these experiences, you will copy and complete
a worksheet, which is located at the end of these instructions (if you had multiple
positions with the same employer, copy and complete one worksheet for each position).
For each position you will complete three steps: 1) in the job history you will describe
the position, including details of your role and activities, 2) you will then identify specific
accomplishments you achieved in that role, and 3) you will “deconstruct” each
accomplishment to identify important career-related information about yourself. Below,
each of these steps are described in more detail, with the worksheet following at the
end. Please take the time to thoughtfully complete this exercise because it is the most
important one in the PCS manual.
Step #1
JOB HISTORY
The job history represents basic information about the company, position and activities
of each job you have held. The worksheet includes instructions and notes to assist you
in completing this portion.
Step #2
IDENTIFYING ACCOMPLISHMENTS
The next step in analyzing your past is to identify accomplishments you achieved during
each of your previous work experiences. There are several reasons why we begin our
self-assessments by reviewing our accomplishments:
• By identifying and “de-constructing” our accomplishments, you begin the process
of uncovering your personal career-related characteristics. Accomplishments
represent a clear demonstration of interests and skills. We typically produce our
best work when we enjoy the activity (interests) while applying the skills we enjoy
using. In turn, your core interests and skills are the primary components that
inform your decisions about what you would “like” to do in your future career.
• Analyzing your accomplishments also provides insights into those things that are
important to your career satisfaction and fulfillment (values), as well as insight
into personality traits that either served or detracted from your success. Not only
is this information important to decision making, but it is also the basis for
identifying personality or performance gaps that allow you to create career plans
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