Careers & Enterprise

• Career


  The occupation that an individual has chosen to pursue, it can be one or many jobs throughout someone's lifetime that contribute to the development in a professional field. A career uses skills and provides a sense of purpose for an individual.
• Reasons why managing your career is important

  • Gives you a way of planning for both short-term and long-term outcomes in career planning and therefore life planning
  • Leads to a healthier work-life balance because you can set goals and plan to achieve them in a timely fashion
• Traditional career development theory (Super's Lifespan (Development) Theory)

  1. Growth

  2. Exploration

  3. Establishment

  4. Maintenance

  5. Decline
• Traditional career development theory

  • Self-concept is solidified through experiences
  • Career maturity is developed and steadily solidified through age and progress through the five stages
  • Career maturity is developed with an individual's readiness to cope with activities such as biological development and societal expectations
• Growth stage


  • Introduced to a variety of occupations and begin to develop concepts of careers and sense of self
  • Vocational self-concepts are defined as one's abilities to perform the required task
  • Develops a stronger sense of self
• Exploration stage


  • Engage with new experiences that help to develop their vocational self-concepts further through training and other work-related endeavours
  • Learn further about their abilities and interests to apply in both work-life and personal-life ventures
  • Entering a field that matches their abilities and interests
• Establishment stage


  • Centred on establishing a stable work-life while still working on stable career advancement
  • Main goal is for people to stabilise their career roles within the context they have
• Maintenance stage


  • Prioritising maintaining their ongoing job status and self-concept
  • Can include a 'Mini cycle' where the stages of exploration and establishment can be gone through again
  • Focus is to preserve their already maintained position in their career thus far
• Decline stage


  • Marks the start of the detachment a person makes from the workforce, which usually means retirement
  • People often start to plan for retirement and decrease their workload and work hours, to prepare to finally leave the workforce
• Contemporary career development theory (Krumholtz' Happenstance Theory)

  • Emphasises unplanned events and random experiences in changing and molding an individual's career path
  • Challenges the traditional thought process that a career must be carefully planned and linear to have any development
• Key features of Krumboltz' Happenstance Theory

  • Clarify ideas
  • Remove blocks
  • Expect the unexpected
  • Take action
• Clarify ideas


  • Explore interests with values and attitudes, combined with a person's skills to develop a better understanding for the individual about their personal career goals
  • Be open minded to changing goals and new opportunities as they emerge
• Remove the blocks


  • Acknowledge and overcome social and emotional barriers that could potentially hinder an individual's attempt at career exploration
  • Blocks could be self-doubt, societal expectations, or an unwillingness to explore the unexpected
• Expect the unexpected


  • Recognise the role of chance in a person's career, it plays a significant role and can be the main shaping factor of someone's work life
  • Embrace change and seize unexpected opportunities, even if they don't align with the individual's original career plans
• Take action


  • Seize the moment and not 'wait for the perfect opportunity'
  • Actively seek out new experiences and opportunities through networking and engaging in new activities
• Report includes headings, sub-headings, contents page, page numbers and graphics
• References provided in APA format
• Continual personal learning


  Constantly develops a person's skills to further enhance their knowledge and understanding as part of their career development. It could be for personal growth or linked to professional development
• Continual personal learning


  • travel
  • volunteering
  • Public speaking course
• Continual professional learning


  A person expanding their skills in response to changing work environments and developments to ensure they can work efficiently in their changing work environment
• Continual professional learning


  • Training courses
  • Graduate programs
  • Online courses
• Examples of both continual personal and professional learning


  • public speaking courses
  • positive mental health workshops
  • written communication
• Importance of continual learning

  • Enables the development of necessary skills at different career points
  • Positive thinking and good communication skills increase the chances of securing employment
  • Maintaining a positive outlook makes you more likely to identify job opportunities as well as opportunities in the workplace to improve
  • Learning a new language or new communication strategy with technology will expand your opportunities in the workplace
  • Continual professional learning ensures that you maintain the relevant skills needed to remain in employment
  • In the changing work environment, you need to be able to develop new skills as requirements change, this makes you more employable
  • Professional learning is needed if a person wishes to change jobs in the future, or if you wish to advance to more challenging work within an organisation
• Future learning options for your own personal/professional development

  • Formal education
  • Taking a gap year
  • Informal education
  • Performance management
  • Monitoring workplace performance
• Key performance indicators (KPIs)

  Used to assess and measure whether objectives are being met. Can be qualitative or quantitative
• Methods used to monitor and improve workplace performance

  • Self-assessment
  • Performance management
  • Quality control
• Self-assessment


  Self-directed evaluation allows the employee to self-reflect on their performance and gives the individual an opportunity to make an honest assessment and provide feedback about their training needs
• Performance management


  A formal system of review that staff within organisations must undertake regularly, to provide feedback to staff about their performance and see you meet the criteria
• Quality control


  Product-focused and emphasises the outcome of an employee's work and the quality level. A worker's effectiveness is measured by their capacity to meet or exceed the benchmarks of the organisation
• Stages of gaining and keeping work

  • Locating job opportunities
  • Applying for a job
  • Attending an interview
• Legal and Ethical management of information


  The appropriate collection, use, storage, protection and sharing of information internally and externally in a workplace. Legal management is based on written law, while ethical standards are based on human rights.
• Legal considerations for information management


  • Privacy laws
  • Insider trading
  • Legal durations for maintaining records
  • Copyrights
  • Trademarks
  • Intellectual property
  • Patents
  • Trade secrets
• Examples of legal information management

  • Non-disclosure agreements
  • Disclosures to ATO and WorkSafe
  • Online data security management
  • Confidentiality agreements
  • Protecting workplace trade secrets and policies
• Ethical management of information


  Adhering to a set of acceptable codes of practice or behaviours for a professional or social group where there is general agreement by all members of the group
• Making an ethically correct decision may be different to making a legally correct decision. Just because it is legal to do something that does not mean it is ethically correct
• Unethical practices could include giving out information regarding the workplace which may be legal to do so but could harm the business's reputation
• The correct use of social media and the following of related social media policies for a workplace
• Legal and Ethical Management of Information


  Responsible handling of sensitive information in accordance with legal requirements and ethical principles. Involves safeguarding confidential data, ensuring data privacy, and adhering to laws and regulations governing data protection. Ethical management includes transparency, honesty, and integrity in how information is collected, stored, used, and shared within the workplace.
• Effective Resource Management


  • Human Resource Management
  • Financial Resource Management
  • Physical Resource Management
  • Technological Resource Management
• Human Resource Management


  Involves activities such as recruiting, training, compensating, and deploying employees to maximize their contribution to organizational objectives.