Learning objectives
The purpose of this assessment is to evaluate the student’s ability to meet the following learning objectives for the module:
- Develop and enhance understanding and knowledge of the IT Industry in terms of its structure, behaviour, and future development.
- Enhance their employability potential by developing their knowledge and use of career development frameworks and tools.
Personal development reflection brief
Each student is expected to reflect on their own continued professional development to date, this is supported by conducting and documenting research into the current graduate employment market.
In order to support this industry research, each student is expected to carry out an assessment of their own personal career aspirations for work and future employment. This will consist of a critical analysis of the student’s current skills and abilities, carrying out industry research in relation to their current career aspirations, providing evidence of their existing skills and competencies in relation to their industry research and develop an action plan to support their continued professional development.
The personal development reflection is to be submitted as an individual report, making use of appendices where necessary to support the main body of the reflection. The reflection should consist of the following:
• An introduction that discusses your current career aspirations.
• A critical evaluation of your current skills, competencies, and capabilities in relation to the group project.
• Industry research to support your current career aspirations.
• Evidence of your existing work-based competencies and an action plan to support your continued professional development.
Further details on the content and structuring of the report are provided on the next page.
Submission details
The word count for the paper is 2000 words maximum, it is suggested that you stick to the suggested word counts on the following page as you will receive marks for the quality of your academic arguments presented and not the quantity of words written. The assignment submission should be fully referenced using APA referencing showing all external sources in a reference list. The assignment submission should be formatted using 1.5 or 2 line spacing. This makes the assignments easier to read and hence easier to mark.
The assignment is worth 50% of the module total.
Suggested structure
Introduction (200 words)
Introduce yourself and outline your current career aspirations, competencies, goals, and values.
Critical analysis of self (500 words maximum)
Critically evaluate the use of your existing competencies in relation to the group project. Make use of theory where necessary to support your analysis.
The critical evaluation should focus on any of the concepts and theories covered in class in relation to your technical and soft skills.
In order to carry out the critical analysis, it is strongly recommended that you keep a reflective diary as part of the group project to be submitted as part of your appendices of the assignment. The reflective diary will then be used to carry out your critical evaluation. Please see the reflective diary document for more information.
In addition to the reflective diary, you may wish to make use of the appendices to evidence anything that you wish to use support your discussion where necessary (I.e., any of the individual assessments that we discussed in class).
Please note – you are expected provide a balanced discussion, do not just focus on one area of the skills. I.e., Technical skills. In particular, the discussion could include the areas are you proficient in at the moment and what areas do you need to develop further.
Industry research (500 words maximum)
• Find three job advertisements that you are interested in applying for when you graduate (Evidence these job advertisements in the appendices).
• Analyse these job roles and summarise the skills and competencies required to do these jobs (think technical and soft skills) – use a table to analyse the skills and competencies required for these jobs.
• Provide a brief analysis of the skills and competencies in job adverts in relation to your own skills discussed in the analysis of self-section in order to link the discussion to the next section (keep this brief).
Evidence of existing competencies and development action plan (500 words maximum)
• Based on your analysis in the industry research section identify three existing key competencies that you can evidence to support your analysis of the job adverts (at least one technical and one soft skill should be identified) and create STAR statements to support each of these competencies. You can evidence your group work or any of your existing career’s experiences (For more information on creating STAR statements please see the following link https://www.thebalancecareers.com/what-is-the-star-interview-response-technique-2061629).
• Create three SMART goals to support your development for any of the competencies that you identified as part of your industry/job analysis feel that you need to develop further to support your current career aspirations. If you want this can link the smart goal to an existing competency as long as you can justify that this skill needs further development, I.e. you can support this development using your analysis of the job adverts (For more information see the following link https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/smart-goals).
Personal development reflection summary (200 words)
• Summarise the key points of the personal development reflection, in particular:
o The job roles that you intend to apply for on graduation and the job markets you are thinking to enter.
o Your three strengths in relation to the types of job role you are interested in applying for.
o Your three areas for development and the actions you intend to take in order to support these developments.
