Foundations of Career Planning Session #1: Starting With You: Clarifying Key Characteristics and Personalizing Your Development Plan

This session is part of the Foundations of Career Planning Program. Visit the Foundations of Career Planning page for more information and to register.

As a Postdoctoral Fellow, you’ve made several key career decisions along the way and as you consider your next steps, it’s important to take time to pause and reflect on how your own characteristics and context fit with your future career direction. This 2-part workshop will provide an opportunity to refine your vision for the future and craft an action plan rooted in a deepened understanding of yourself.

Career development is a lifelong process which, as described in hope-action theory, cycles through self-reflection and self-clarity through to implementation and adaptation. Understanding how your key characteristics and contextual factors tie into your work, life, and learning goals is fundamental. This session is focused on getting to know yourself more deeply. Leave better equipped to express your unique set of skills, interests, values, and personal style, within the context of your relationships, responsibilities, and resources, identifying common themes and patterns to inform the next phase of career development (i.e., visioning, decision making, and action planning).

In the second part of the session, participants will shift their focus towards developing a vision for the future and making informed career decisions grounded in a deepened understanding of themselves and their contexts and the full spectrum of opportunities potentially available to them (e.g., academia vs. industry, contract vs. employee, local vs. international). This session will review the goal setting and action planning process leaving participants better equipped to personalize a development plan which aligns to their key characteristics and contexts and is responsive to shifts in work, life, and learning realities.

Learning objectives:

• Explore the career planning and development process and how your career path may be impacted depending on where you are in your life
• Apply conceptual frameworks for understanding yourself and your future (e.g., the Wheel, UN SDGs, Career Engagement model, Hope-Action theory)
• Take stock of your personal characteristics (e.g., motivated and transferrable skills, interests, values, and personal style)
• Integrate results from career assessment tools and reflective activities, identifying common themes and patterns
• Explore diverse career opportunities and workforce realities of the highly educated
• Craft a vision for the future tied to self-reflection activities
• Engage in a goal setting and action planning process
• Acknowledge the importance of adaptability and hope within the career development process

Pre-work:

Prior to this session, ensure you’ve completed the Skill Scan and Career Values Scale assessments. Participants are not required to purchase these assessments, the PDFO will purchase the assessments and provide access codes to all participants.

FACILITATOR

Dr. Roberta Borgen

Dr. Roberta Borgen (Neault), CCC, GCDF-i, CCDP, is an award-winning leader in the career development sector, in Canada and internationally. She is a published author and international speaker on topics related to career management. Roberta's academic career has involved contract work at 10 universities across Canada, the US, and Asia, including serving as the Associate Dean of a university in New Brunswick and later serving as an Adjunct Professor and Director of the Psychological Services and Counselling Training Centre (PSCTC) at UBC while running her BC-based consulting company. Her extensive experience supporting graduate students, postdocs, managers, executive leaders, and professionals brings unique perspective to crafting professional work search documents.

Registration

This session is part of the Foundations of Career Planning Program. Please note that space in the program is limited, and submitting this registration form does not guarantee a seat in the program. Those successfully registered in the program will receive an email with additional information. Those successfully registered will receive a confirmation closer to the program date.

Accessibility

If you have a disability, medical condition, or accessibility concern that may affect your full participation in the event, please email postdoctoral.fellows@ubc.ca in advance of the event.

PDFO EVENT COMMUNITY AGREEMENT

The PDFO has created a community agreement for our events in order to foster an inclusive, welcoming, and respectful environment in which all event attendees feel safe and supported.

By participating in a PDFO event, we commit ourselves to:

• Treating one another with kindness, courtesy and respect in all interactions;
• Engaging in gracious, active listening and valuing others’ opinions;
• Not dominating discussions so that others can share during the session;
• Ensuring that any potentially confidential or sensitive information shared as part of the session is not shared outside of the session; and
• Actively participating in the session