Career Support

Planning your career planning

There are four steps to career planning, which can support you to explore what career may be a good fit for you.  

Your interests, skills and personality will guide this process, and shape your ideas of jobs and industries you find interesting.    

Career planning will help you to explore the life, work and learning options available to you, and make sure that your career choices fit with your personal circumstances. 

• Know Yourself

  To make informed career choices you need to know yourself well, including your likes, dislikes, values, skills, priorities, and personal circumstances. All these things will influence your career choices. Ask yourself questions like ‘Where am I now?’ and ‘Where do I want to get to?’ Think about what you enjoy, your interests and skills, and what challenges and motivates you.

  My skills – you are most likely to succeed in life if you use your talents to their fullest extent. Identifying your own skills and talents can assist you identifying opportunities.

  • Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats (SWOT) Analysis 

  Values - assessing your own values and what you need in your ideal job can help in future career decisions.

  Personality – understanding your personality type and the types of jobs which align with your individual personality can help to identify opportunities.

  • MBTI 
  • MBTI careers

  Motivations – what do you want from work? There are many motivations for why people as seeking a career change: these may include career growth, distance from home, family responsibilities, work environment, money, fame, power, creativity, independence, social interaction, challenging roles, job opportunities, satisfaction, and helping others.

• Explore

  When investing in your future career, it makes sense to spend some time finding out about the jobs that are out there, what they are like and what people say about them. This may require some investigation and reading about different jobs and their responsibilities. What type of jobs match up with your skills and interests? Where are the jobs and what are their conditions? Look at what training and qualifications you’ll need and where vacancies are advertised.

  There are a number of online websites you can access to help you with this research, and take career quizzes about what type of job conditions you would like, including:

  • Job Outlook 
  • Myfuture 

  The TAFE SA career profiles pages will give you information about many careers, and examples of the courses you can study to help you achieve your career goals.

• Decide

  Weigh up what you know about yourself and the occupations you have researched, and make decisions about the most suitable career path for you. You might like to think about the pro’s and con’s of each option, and what type of volunteering you could do to get some experience. You can then identify the course that you need to study to achieve your goals. How you will reach your goal? Deciding on the training options that suit you. Can you get some experience at a lower level or voluntary organisation first to ‘build’ your skills? Be realistic in your expectations.

  If you aren’t sure how to make the best decision, take some time to read about how to make better decisions.

• Act

  Once you have decided what is the best career option for you, your final step is to take action. This is about making sure you know what you need to do to enrol into your identified course which will help you to achieve your career goals. Enrol in courses, targeting your study and placement opportunities toward your career goals. Collect evidence of your achievements for potential employers. Build useful networks with people in your industry.

  Make sure you look at the TAFE SA course pages to get the most up-to-date information about admission requirements, how to apply, and what it will cost.

  You may also like to start thinking about writing your resume and cover letter, and being prepared for applying for jobs. You can find resume templates on the Seek website

Get help with your career planning or job preparation

Current and recently graduated students can book an appointment using the links below, or by calling TAFE SA Customer Support on 1800 882 661. Support is available for recently graduated students for 12 months after completing your training with TAFE SA.