Personal Career Action Plan and Personal Reflection - Admission/Application Essay Example

Personal Career Action Plan and Personal Reflection Name College Course Date Personal Career Action Plan and Personal Reflection Introduction and Content People that plan their profession years ahead and work hard accomplish many things compared to people without long-term plans or those who let their direct benefits dictate their occupation decisions (Marczely 2008, p.90). It is crucial for a person to evaluate his weaknesses, strengths, interests, and realistically assess his preferences and make appropriate plans, instead of becoming reactive and wind up in a job where he/she fails to realize his/her actual potentials due to many diverse reasons (University of Edinburg Career Services 2010, p.1; Oregon State University 2010, p.1). This paper demonstrates my personal action career plan and reflection in my preferred career interest, which is marketing. Personal Analysis My personal action career plan comprise of several phases. Before obtaining my dream occupation, which is becoming a senior promotion executive at an international company, I had to obtain valuable experience and skills. Some of the required skills include communication skills, interpersonal skills, the capacity to carry out comprehensive researchers, as well as creativity. However, I have been able to obtain some of these skills while working at diverse positions in the recent years. I have completed some of the phases I have set in my personal action career plan. The first phase in my career involves obtaining communication skills. After completing my high school, I applied for a sales person job at Delivery Toys whereby I was later required to market the company’s products in my district. Working at such a multi-level organization gave me more experience in several areas. For instance, prior to taking the job, Discovery Toys paid for all sales persons significant training courses whereby I learnt how to increase my selling and communication skills. Secondly, I improved my communication skills since I spoke to many people every day trying to sway them to purchase the products. Some customers did not want to buy the products and my duty involved knocking on their doors and influencing them to purchase the commodities. Although it was challenging at first, I learnt to sell these products after a short period of time. Secondly, I got used to rejection from people. This is one negative side of being a sales person although I later learnt how to deal with their rejections professionally. Additionally, my team management skills improved since I had to build my own team in order to obtain a particular sales percentage issues by the company. The second phase involved working in the research department and knowing about the market. After working for a year, Delivery Toys changed my position and placed me in a research project intended to identify the sentiments of the consumers about the products. Since I had already obtained some experience and confidence in direct sale and corresponding with people, my supervisor thought that I needed to learn about the market. Everyone selected for the research had to fully participate while the team leaders helped their members to acquire valuable skills (Benne and Sheats 1948, p.46). The third phase involved working as a marketing officer. Although I was young, Delivery Toys management felt that I had the experience and skills required to become a marketing officer. I received an opportunity to collaborate directly with representatives from various cultures. I was able to study these representatives closely since I knew this would help me in future. This was an opportunity to help me effectively manage global workforce and be able to target prospective customers from diverse nationalities. Despite accomplishing these things, I still feel the need to learn some skills in a different environment. It is possible that other companies have a different environment from Discovery Toys. My skill will improve and help me to become diverse when dealing with different people in different markets. I still feel that I am a work in progress with the skills of managing and motivating employees to enhance their job performance, which is an important skill for any business (Niles and Harris 2002, p.13). Team Working Reflection While still working as a sales person for Delivery Toys in my region, I organized a group whose tasks involved convincing people to buy the products. My task involved ensuring that all my team members sell a certain percentage of products prior to reporting to the company. I also had to make sure that every team member had an assigned route to sell the products. When a member failed to make the cut, I had to make a critical decision of removing him/her from the team and finding another member. Although it was hard to send away the lazy members at first because some of the members were my friends, I learnt how to differentiate my personal life to my professional life. We usually met on the weekends and discussed about the challenges we faced during the weekdays. After that I had to report to my supervisor. I received positive results from my supervisor while my team members loved working with each other. They would always praise me for my work because I gave each one of them an opportunity to air their issues. The discussions we held on weekends helped the group to become stronger and learn from each other’s experiences. I felt comfortable working with my team and I would enjoy working with them in future. My evaluation about the group is that although we had the best sales compared to other sale persons in the company, I feel that my team would have done better. Some of the team members had difficulties when dealing with problematic and insensitive clients. Training them on how to deal with insensitive clients would have been very important. Nevertheless, I had so much to learn from the team. My interpersonal skills and communication skills improved and I was also able to perform better. I also received positive feedback from my peers since most of them had not worked in a team before. They felt motivated to work with different people too. This positive feedback motivated me to work hard and participate in team work effectively if I want to succeed in my profession. My experience with the team matched up with the team role theory or Belbin Team roles. Dr. R.M Belbin says that a team does not comprise of a group of individuals with professional titles, but a group of people with a duty known to other members (Belbin 1981, p.134). According to him, team members look for particular roles and perform those that are intrinsic to them effectively. This is the same thing in my team. As a team leader, I identified the behavioral weaknesses and strengths of the members to create productive working relations, select and develop high-performing team, raise individual effectiveness, and create a mutual trust and comprehension (Zepeda 2008, p.106; Gronlund and Linn 1990, p.300). Conclusion In conclusion, working with a team is the best experience that a person could experience. However, the practice can be positive if the team members have a mutual trust and understanding while carrying out their activities. Working in a team taught me many things such as how to communicate with people from different cultures, race, gender, and age; how to survive in the market; as well as how to become a leader. However, despite the many challenges I believe that the as a team we could accomplish more and increase our percentage sale in future if we continue to work together. If I was given another task again, I would change my first approach of managing the team a little bit by involving people from other areas and learn how to work with them. References List Belbin, R 1981. Management teams: Why they succeed or fail. London: Heinemann. Benne KD and Sheats P 1948. Functional roles of group members. Journal of Social Issues. 4. pp: 41-49 Gronlund, NE and Linn, RL. 1990. Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Journal of Personality Assessment. 60. pp: 209-301. Marczely, B 2008. Personalizing Professional Growth: Staff Development That Works: Designing Professional Development Series. Thousand of Oaks, California: Corwin Press. Niles, SG and Harris BJ. 2002. Career Development Interventions in the 21st Century. Columbus, OH: Merrill Prentice Hall. Oregon State University 2010. Career Planning Process. Accessed on January 8, 2014 from http://www.osucascades.edu/studentresources/careers/puzzle. University of Edinburg Career Services 2010. The Career Planning Process. Accessed on January 8, 2014 from http://www.careers.ed.ac.uk/STUDENTS/Getting_Started/The_Career_Planning_Process.html  Zepeda, SJ 2008. Professional Development: What Works. New York: Eye on education Read More