Career plan - Future of work

Career Plan - Key Strategies and Actions

In your ePortfolio you must complete a career action plan. Use this worksheet and complete the following
sections. The prompts are here to assist you with thinking through your key strategies and what actions
you can undertake to help you towards achieving what is needed for your future career. The aim is to help
you to think and consider strategies for what might help you to prepare for future employment.

1. Be self-aware

What actions can you take to really understand your interests, values, skills, personality and strengths?

Thinking about my future career I can see how my personal values play into this career decision. I strongly
value good health, generosity and happiness, this shows through my interest in allied health. I believe that
I am a patient, compassionate and caring individual hence why I strive to care and look after people. I am
interested in food science and metabolism and learning about the complexity of the human body, I enjoy
being able to share my knowledge with others. With my career I would like the opportunity to be able to
share my knowledge and shape a more educated future. I find that I learn best when I am given the
opportunity to reflect on my learning experiences and improve from there. Although I see myself as
introverted I still throughly enjoy connecting with and getting to know new people.
Word count: 142

Megan Cassidy - Griffith University Plan: Career plan - Future of work

Created: 21-NOV-23 Last Modified: 17-DEC-23 Page 1 of 4 pages
2. Explore your options

What do you need to research to be clear about your options? What could you do to learn more about
career options in your areas of interest?

I need to research more about whether or not further study after my bachelor's is necessary to find a job,
what are the top qualities or attributes of a dietitian and assess this to my current qualities, I would also
like to learn more about the salary of my future position. To gain a deeper understanding of my potential
career outcomes I will need to start by following and engaging with professionals in the field through
platforms like LinkedIn to ask questions and get to know more about where my degree can take me. I
could reach out to lecturers at uni in my discipline to learn about my options through their experiences in
the field. Instagram has become a very popular platform for dietitian to use to advocate their jobs and so I
will also begin to explore this avenue by creating resources to share and begin to establish a platform for
my future career.
Word count: 156

3. Gain experience and insight

What actions could you take to help you learn more about your industry or find opportunities to develop
your skills or find work experience opportunities?

My plan to gain experience in this field is to reach out to local private practices or GP's that offer dietetics
services and try to attain a job as at an admin level so that I can gain an understanding of the business
side and learn more about how to structure my services in the future. If this is not possible to find paid
work I will also reach out to practices and volunteer my time to assist in any way that I can, by doing this I
will develop insight into the tasks and roles that a dietitan does as well as cultivate and practice new skills
that will future employers can see. Furthermore, during Uni I will utilise opportunities that arise for me to
develop many transferable skills such as communication, leadership.
Word count: 134

Megan Cassidy - Griffith University Plan: Career plan - Future of work

Created: 21-NOV-23 Last Modified: 17-DEC-23 Page 2 of 4 pages
4. Evidence your skills (knowledge, skills and attributes)

What action can you take to find out more about what skills you might need to develop in your future
career? How might you document/record these?

To best determine if my skills meet the requirements of future employers I will go through Linkedin ads
for dietitian jobs. Many of the skills I have found to be relevant to my career include effective
communication skills, good leadership and initiative, compassion and empathy, organisational skills,
interpersonal skills. Looking back through my skills audit I can identify some of these skills in myself,
however I feel that there are some skills I could improve before I graduate. I scored myself a 2 for
leadership and a 1 for negotiation and conflict resolution. To improve my leadership I will become more
active in tutorial group activities, as well as take the lead in group assignments to practice my leadership.
To develop my conflict resolution skills will be necessary as it plays into the interpersonal skills needed for
my job as there is a lot of negotiating and resolving issues for patients. I will achieve this by using extra-
curricular activities like my intern to practice negotiating and use conflict management with my
colleagues.
Word count: 172

5. Develop networks

List three things you could do to start building your professional networks.

Developing and maintaining network connections with individuals in my field will be a vital step in
boasting my career, my plan is to connect with professionals in my field through by attending seminars
and events that are hosted by Dietitian's Australia, as this is a large and well established organisation they
will provide the platform to connect with a variety of professionals. This organisation also offers
mentoring from an APD to a student, by signing up to this I will be able to increase by connections and
expand from their network into other practices. I will also use Linkedin as a platform to enhance my
networks, I will become more active by posting my latest achievements and updating regularly my skills.
Any professionals or future colleagues that I meet through these events I will reach out to them and send
thank you or nice to meet you messages which will boast the likelihood of people remembering me.
Word count: 157

Megan Cassidy - Griffith University Plan: Career plan - Future of work

Created: 21-NOV-23 Last Modified: 17-DEC-23 Page 3 of 4 pages
Source: Griffith University Careers and Employment Service (2020)

Megan Cassidy - Griffith University Plan: Career plan - Future of work

Created: 21-NOV-23 Last Modified: 17-DEC-23 Page 4 of 4 pages