Foundations of Career Planning: Starting With You: Clarifying Key Characteristics and Personalizing Your Development Plan (POSTPONED)

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.

Pre-work: Prior to Part 1, ensure you’ve completed the Skill Scan and Career Values Scale assessments. Participants will not be required to purchase these assessments - the PDFO will purchase assessments and provide each participant with an access code.

Part 1: Clarifying Key Characteristics

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).

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

Part 2: Personalizing Your Development Plan

Building from Part 1, 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 diverse career opportunities and workforce realties 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

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. Visit the Foundations of Career Planning Program page for more information and to register in the program.

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.

DELIVERY FORMAT

This session will be delivered online via Zoom. The following suggestions may help to improve the online experience:

• Use headphones to reduce noise and avoid feedback between your mic and speaker.
• Ensure that you are in a quiet location so that the audio does not get polluted with unwanted noise.
• Keep your microphone on mute unless you are speaking during the session.
• In case of technical problems, time for plugin downloads, etc., please attempt to log into the Zoom meeting 10-15 minutes before the start. You will be placed in the waiting room until the official start time.