Becoming career smart (Deakin university )2

KFC’s #myplan

Corporations are increasingly developing programs that enable employees to become more self-reflective.

KFC ® Australia’s #myplan program provides a framework to engage team members in self-reflection, self-evaluation and goal setting. This helps them to understand the employability skills they have obtained in their career at KFC, and also prompts them to look for new career opportunities such as promotions or new roles inside and external to the organisation. It is an innovative plan for a large organisation to develop its’ staff and take them to new levels, which will benefit the employee and the company.

KFC developed the #myplan program to promote employee engagement and retention, as well as to identify a talent pipeline within the company.

KFC Australia’s chief people officer, Rob Phipps stated: 

It gives them more specific examples of where the conversations might go … It tells them how they should be planning for the conversations and takes them through all the different aspects to make sure that they’re set up in the right way to have this conversation.

Employees of KFC are encouraged to share their #myplan goals with parents, career advisors and other key stakeholders.

Skills audit

Now you are going to put self-reflection into practice.

Your assessment task is a skills audit; it is a process for considering and recording the skills that you have picked up and developed in your career thus far. This task is not graded, but it will be beneficial for you to do in order to reflect and further develop your professional skills.

Conducting a skills audit is an important step when you are planning any career change and will help you plot out:

• what skills you have
• what levels they are at
• what evidence you have to demonstrate the skills and their levels.

Your skills-audit journey

Now that you have finished your skills audit, we can consider and reflect on the process.

You may have identified new skills that you would like to develop or existing skills you would like to strengthen. You may find you are fairly content with your skill matching for the career you have chosen. You may have found a new career path you may like to pursue.

Your questions answered

We hope that you’ve enjoyed learning about how to identify and sell your key strengths and skills and you will come away from this course with some practical strategies that you can implement in either your own personal situation or workplace setting.

In this final step of the course, you have the opportunity to ask our educators any questions you might still have about the material you’ve covered.

How do I ask a question? Submit your question in the discussion. We encourage you to keep your questions short and clearly focused so we can answer as many as possible.

What questions will be answered? As we won’t be able to answer every question, we encourage you to like the questions most important to you. We’ll respond to the most liked or thematically popular questions posted.

How will questions be answered? Our educators will answer the most popular questions in the discussion.

When do I need to ask my question?Please add your question to the discussion before the end of this week.

When will questions be answered? We’ll post our responses to your questions, early in the following week once all your questions have been posted.

Becoming career smart (Deakin university )1

New credentials

Technological innovations have shifted the way we work and are also disrupting traditional education and skills training.

New models of education have evolved to create ‘on demand’ and ‘just in time’ training designed to fill skills gaps. This is creating a workforce of lifelong learners. Learning opportunities have diversified significantly leading to more encompassing and up-to-date credentials.

These new ways of documenting our skills do not replace traditional educational credentials but they can generate a more comprehensive and personalised portfolio for professionals.

New learning opportunities

A number of entrepreneurial start-ups, such as Lynda.com have experimented with technology-driven models for both academic and vocational education. Others like Udacity, partner with tech giants like Google and Facebook to offer programming and technology curricula for professionals so they can keep learning new skills.

MOOCs

Courses such as this one are part of the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) movement. They are often provided by prestigious universities at no cost or low cost, offering various learning experiences and credentials. Examples include: FutureLearn, edX, Stanford Online, Coursera, Udacity and Lynda.com.

Professional internships

Professional mid-career internships operate on the same principle as any other internship but are different from the traditional mode of an internship where unpaid work takes place. These internships are part work, part training, and part exposure to a company and networks. Professional internship programs are short-term paid, non-binding work arrangements that provide a trial period for both the professional and the organisation.

New types of credentials

Now, more than ever, employers need you to be work-ready. Professionals who need to upgrade their skills to advance in their careers are looking for alternatives to the traditional university degree. A great step to advancing your career is to look out for quality courses for professionals that allow you to upgrade your skills.

Professional accreditation

Professional certification can be earned by a person to assure qualification to perform a job or task. This can include accreditation as a user of a complex software suite through to general skill sets in areas like project management. Make the effort to gain any certificates or qualifications your trade or profession offers. These courses can add to your skill set and qualifications gained can add weight to your resume.

Fellowships

If your profession or employer offers accredited fellowships, see if you can apply to take part. For example, the Higher Education Academy (HEA) is a British professional institution that works with tertiary education providers to enhance the professional experience of educators through fellowships, that validate professional experience.

Open badges

Mozilla’s Open Badges enable organisations to issue, earn and display online credentials as digital badges. They can help you display and promote your 21st century skills, and unlock career and educational opportunities. Digital badging technologies enable recognition for diverse skills and achievements that happen within and beyond formal institutional contexts.

What are the traditional educational institutions doing to ensure that they are providing all-encompassing and more up-to-date credentials? Do they provide enough of the skills that students and the workplace need? In the next step we see how universities have been trying to bridge this gap.

Professional Practice Credential

One way of futureproofing your professional experience is via something known as a Professional Practice Credential.

This model offers professionals an alternative to traditional higher education that is credible, validated and largely based on recognition of professional practice and experience.

Few people realise the massive changes that a focus on professional capabilities and resulting credentials have made both to education worldwide but also to the recognition of individual expertise.

Let’s take a look at an example of a university’s credentials and explore why they are important.

Deakin University has a list of core professional practice credentials that are linked to our Graduate Learning Outcomes:

• Communication: is a critical component in successfully responding to change, enhancing innovation and promoting continuous improvement when deployed with other capabilities such as critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration and emotional judgement.
• Digital literacy: is necessary to identify, access, manage, integrate and evaluate digital resources and construct new knowledge to improve strategic operations.
• Critical thinking: empowers employees to learn from their mistakes, recognise opportunities, and observe facts objectively, systematically identify causes of problems, research and anticipate future events and overcome challenges to improve workplace success.
• Problem solving: involves the ability to define and analyse problems, identify problem severity and implement optimal solutions.
• Self-management: is essential to demonstrate your capability to continually learn, respond to changes and enhance work practices.
• Teamwork: is critical to work productively within a collaborative project or team and is vital for increasing creativity, improving the quality of work and fostering healthy and productive relationships with colleagues and stakeholders in business.
• Global citizenship: is essential in understanding your professional responsibilities in an increasingly diverse global economy.
• Emotional judgement: is essential in navigating social networks, and influencing and inspiring others.
• Innovation: is essential for organisations to respond to future opportunities, embrace new uses of technologies and improve industry methods.
• Professional ethics: encompasses the personal, organisational and corporate standard of behaviour expected of professionals.

These credentials are a formal recognition that skills and knowledge acquired through learning and experience have been successfully delivered to the agreed outcomes.

The credentials are underpinned by the professional capability standards. In the case of information technology the focus is on the Skills Framework for the Information Age, which describes skills required by professionals in roles involving information and communications technology.

Communicating your brand

We live in a communication age. Being able to communicate effectively, especially about yourself, is one of the most important professional skills.

We have looked at various transferrable skills that add to becoming a successful individual. Let’s take a closer look at one of them—communication. It’s never too late to improve your communication skills. Being able to communicate information accurately, clearly and as intended will open many doors for you to new and better opportunities.

Networking

Many professionals use social networking sites such as Facebook to communicate with friends and family or LinkedIn to build wider professionals networks. This digitally facilitated networking is incredibly useful, but how good are we at actually networking in person?

Networking in person can be a much more difficult skill to master. Your primary goal when you are networking is to leave people with a good impression of you and a desire to know more about you and stay connected.

Maintaining and growing your network is crucial for almost every aspect of your work. Individually, it sets you up for new opportunities and advancements down the road. It gives you access to new ideas, research and perspectives that can drive change forward.

Digital profile

Most of us need a digital profile. Some of the reasons your digital profile is critical are:

1. Increasingly, prospective employers, potential business connections and new clients will go online first to find brand ‘you’.
2. Your digital profile is a reflection of who you are, what you’ve done and what you’d like to do. 
3. It is an opportunity to tell your story, where you can highlight your strengths and downplay those other areas that may not be so strong.
4. Your digital profile is a dimension of your personal and professional brand. It shows not just who you are, but how you interact and connect with others.

For almost everyone LinkedIn is a good starting point. LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network with hundreds of millions of members. But your digital profile isn’t just LinkedIn. It includes other social media platforms (eg Facebook, personal websites or blogging platforms such as Medium) as we saw earlier, and these are all becoming smarter and interconnected. Make sure you are giving a consistent message about yourself on your public profiles. 

Employers want to see a record of continual-learning achievement and a digital portfolio that demonstrates competence, creativity and forward thinking.

How well do you communicate?

Communication skills are foundational to everything that we do including work.

Communication is a critical component in successfully responding to change, enhancing innovation and promoting continuous improvement.

Elon Musk and Tesla's new battery system

Have you heard of Elon Musk?

If not, you may have heard of one of his many companies and products? The Tesla Motors electric car? The SpaceX Falcon space rockets?

Because he is an exceptional leader in the areas of technology and engineering, he presents a good example of what effective communication skills look like.

Watch the video by Elon Musk introducing Tesla’s new battery system.

What are some of his key communication traits?

He shows a combination of great interpersonal skills, being inspirational and exhibiting trustworthiness.

Interpersonal skills

Elon Musk’s interpersonal skills encompass being able to listen to his colleagues, customers and audience. He is always polite and attentive to people he engages with.

He knows how to create relationships and connections (in a business sense and in a presentation) as well as how to act in various often unique environments or situations.

Inspiring

Musk’s speeches and presentations inspire because you can clearly see he is excited about the Tesla battery system, or whatever it is he is talking about.

When you see someone who is genuinely excited about a product they are pitching, that is appealing to the audience. He is actually invested in this product in every way and wants to share his enthusiasm with the public.

Despite talking about a battery for 20 minutes he managed to engage the audience on the importance of eliminating humanity’s use of fossil fuels. His solution was well thought out, and he discussed how it can be achieved in a clear and concise way. He had the audience on their feet, invested and applauding.

Trust

Musk is honest about what a new product can do and where it can fit into the market. He will not try to oversell the product and he cuts out the jargon.

This brings an element of trust, because you know the product he is pitching and talking about is close to what he believes it will be. In his presentation on the Tesla battery system, he simply describes the problem of using fossil fuels and presents a plausible solution to solve the problem. No fancy theatrics or ‘smoke and mirrors