Do a SWOT analysis to plan your career

SWOT analysis is relevant to every pursuit where planning for the future is necessary. Career planning is no exception and can be facilitated when you take stock of various strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats - the acronym for SWOT - that have a say in your career. 

When you are involved in a job search, the issue of different prompting factor for competitive advantages ought to be clear to you. And you can certainly do well in your career if you are clear about your objectives and lines of action; and their ability to bring about favourable results.

SWOT analysis is the key to understand the potency and usefulness of any plan. However you need to also understand that if your weaknesses outnumber your strengths, you automatically stand placed in a disadvantageous position. A SWOT analysis will tell you where you stand and whether you will succeed or not. Additionally, you are able to discern issues that can position you on a favourable pedestal. Therefore, the importance and efficacy of a SWOT analysis cannot be underestimated.

A SWOT analysis implies consideration and evaluation of a horde of internal and external factors. Your strengths and weakness are your internal canvas whereas your opportunities and threats are your external conditions. To be able to highlight your potencies and subjugate your weaknesses; and successfully visualise your career prospects, a SWOT analysis is the answer.   

• Strengths: They are constructive and optimistic features that can be utilised in an extremely beneficial manner to place you in a position of advantage. The leads that are manipulated to benefit you generally pertain to you academic qualifications, personality traits, experience in a field, leadership attributes, sense of camaraderie and networking skills. Therefore, when you list your strengths, you will have to shed all prejudice and catalogue your attributes accurately. In doing so, you will be able to discern your strengths.  
• Weaknesses: These are the down-beat and disapproving aspects of your inherent qualities. Such weaknesses need careful deliberation and call for perk-up actions. Since they are negative, they are not constructive and unlikely to hold you in good stead. What are such qualities? Some of the common ones are your negative personal traits, warnings issued to you, inability to formulate objectives and inability to search a job for yourself. Like in the instance of strengths, you need to be absolutely neutral in your approach during the analysis process. It is best to don the hat of a prospective employer and imagine what all would he regard as your negative points. Remember that gauging and weighing up weaknesses is easier said than done. But, in any case their consideration is inescapable and hence need to be identified. Having discerned them, it is an ideal beginning of a career.
• Opportunities: What exactly do opportunities mean? These are external issues on which you can exercise no influence or jurisdiction. However, you can definitely draw benefits from them. It is all contingent on your know-how domain that may warrant use of your diverse capabilities so that good openings are rolled out to make your future secure and facilitate career advancement. The opportunities may unfold themselves through your own understanding and realisation. Various other encouraging and positive opportunities may well be extremely difficult and could also have locational ramifications.
• Threats: We all know that the world around us comprises both good and bad influences. The latter are threats to you. You cannot exercise full control over the threats you, nevertheless, you can always reduce their effects. Some primary manifestations of threats are temporary career or job  setbacks, availability of better qualified personnel, better institutions than those attended by you and relatively diminished knowledge base. Threats , similar to opportunities can be determined if you are on the lookout for them. With a revolution brought about by internet, there are scores of websites that keep people updated on employment trends; they can be perused to gain a good knowledge about them. 

Once you finish your SWOT analysis, you ought to set into motion self-promotion. You should put in writing your career objectives. You should also clarify your mind about what you want your job to be like and if your current one is not satisfying, whether or not are you willing for a change. The second step is to give an impetus to your self-promotion activities. It will essentially involve identification of organisations that you would like to join, approaching them and an action plan to take things to a logical conclusion, together with a time schedule. 

Having done the above, your search for your dream job can be initiated. You will find that your SWOT analysis will facilitate in the formulation of a roadmap to advance ahead in your career. You will realise that you are better geared up to highlight your strengths, reduce your weaknesses, set eyes on your opportunities and overwhelm your threats. It is then that your career plan will be a secure one.