Case Study: Career Aspirations

According to Baruch, in order to understand the motivation of career targets and aspirations, it is important to recognize the psychological issues of people behaviour. Based on my self-fulfilments, I will outline my current career aspirations, identify and explain the job role within the chosen occupation. Also, distinguish between what job I am intending to move directly to, after leaving my studies and where I want to be in five years time. In other words differentiate between short, medium and long term aspiration. Then I will give details of skills required to apply for the chosen occupation. Finally, with relevant evidence I will identify one personal strength and weakness that affect my competence, performance which in some way, influences the results of my job performance and commitments.

My career aspirations for the next five years surround my desire to become a Tourism Officer. However, my career goal is to progress from tourist information assistant in the short term period for the next twelve months, to assistant tourism officer in the medium, a career target that I am intending to reach in three years time, and last but not least my long term career ambition, the position of a tourism officer. (Prospects, 2009)

Tourist information assistant helps visitors, gives advice of what to do where to stay and eat, makes suggestion of the best ways to travel along the area, sales items like maps, books, souvenirs, postcards and tickets for sightseeing tours, or for events performance and for coaches but, sometimes they also change foreign currency into British money. Other duties may include: putting itself updated about local area events, tourism attractions and accommodation; post information, replay queries by email, process payments and tidy the centre. Assistants engage face to face and telephone contact with visitors, generally work with other team member and use computers to search information. (Jobs4u Careers Database, 2009)

Assistant of tourism officer gives support and assistance to the tourism officer in promoting the existing tourist attractions throughout advertising campaigns, promotional literature and local media, research of existing tourist attractions, and local history. Also, local people’s views are acquired in order to gain feedback to develop and improve new tourist attractions, promote the profile of the local area and bring up a positive publicity which creates a brand identity for the area. Coordination of exhibitions at conferences both nationally and internationally with the ambition of promoting the region; consideration of the benefits of any planned developments to the local environment, provisions of support, guidance or funds for local tourism business and giving advice to the people that are new in this businesses. Furthermore, discuss with the local businesses about the effectiveness of current tourism development policies in order to build up new strategies.

Tourism officer is responsible for all job entails described above. This work involves dealing with people like for example: residents and businesses in a local community in order to develop and promote tourism with the aim to attract visitors and as well raising up the economy of a specific region. They normally work for local authorities but might as well work with other public sector or private companies. (Prospects, 2009)

Skills required/demanded in the chosen occupation/role

The ability to develop and boost tourism potential to increase prosperity of an area, a town or region is a demand for the position of tourism officer. Thus, the demands in this occupation are flexibility, good communication, pleasant presentation, creativity, innovation, ability to adapt to new situations also, to the customers’ needs, IT skills, good knowledge of the local area, enthusiasm within the sector and perhaps a degree in tourism/marketing. Prospects (2009) nevertheless as a progressive route achievement position, it is important to gain as much experience as possible with pre-entry like as a tourism assistant, helping at events, tourist information centre or in a local department. It is also important to have friendly manner, good listening and questioning skills, clear speech and good telephone manner, ability to work under pressure, be accurate and maybe speak an additional language. (Job family, 2009)

ONE Strength

Determination can be defined as one of my strength because, even feeling weak I never give up and force myself to achieve my set goals. For example, last year the UK, EU Decisions & Appeals team, decided that I did not meet the requirement for the right to reside and that I was not considered to be habitual resident in the UK, decision made based on the 2006 regulation of the immigration (European Economic Area). The same was confirmed by the citizen advice borough who told me that my chances to appeal were very low and it would be a waste of time because, the decision team was a well prepared and trained according to the European and UK new legislation. With my determination, I decided to go forward and make my appeal according to my thoughts in relation to the mentioned legislations based on my findings. I wrote and sent a letter to their service asking them to look again to their decision. In reply of my writing and highlighted points, there was a change of decision in my favour. Meaning that my determination is my strength which was the key motor to fighting back against their opinion and decision making also, it was the reason that I did not gave up.

ONE Weakness

Opposing that, adapting to new situations it is always a nightmare for me, every time that I have to do it; everything related to the new skills learning gives me headaches. I need to struggle to not stay behind and move forward because I have a tendency to lose my confidence, and then I get a weak control of the role. At the present, I easily and quickly execute many different office duties without any problem but, I do remember the feeling that I used to have when I was taking the business and administration qualification. I used to feel very badly and negative about my progress and sometimes feeling that I would not make it and the more nervous I used to feel the worst were my achievements. I had to fight strongly between my feelings and my commitment to develop and achieve the ambitioned qualification. As you can see this specific example confirms my weakness in adapting to new situations but at end of the day I end up overcoming this personal obstacle.

REFLECTION ON PERSONAL SKILLS DEVELOPMENT

In this section I will reflect and make a description of three personal significant experiences where I had learned and develop new skills that I believe will be important to my future career. I will explain about what I did learn from it and provide relevant information of skills gained that I believe are going to help me build my future employment.

First experience was my first job interview where: I was asked to do a physiologic game in order to measure my movements and time management to execute a particular duty in the electronic factory. I was very nervous and could not do it, and I almost lost my job opportunity. With patience the interviewer did ask me to go out and try to relax, until be called back, and should not forget that nerves will not give me a job.

After that time out, I was called back and asked to do the same activities according to their rules. With my self control I was able to do well and get a permanent job in a good environment. As a result, for that experience I learned how to control myself under pressure in order to reach my goal and also, gain new skills like for example inspection of faults in electronic plaques, repair of the faults and management of industrial solder machines.

Second experience was my Technical business/administration & IT level III curse, with the following subjects: Formal and commercial correspondence, Human Resource Management, Accountancy, Data input, Customer services and IT. This course was a ten months intensive office and IT oriented, with the purpose of providing skills in an organization, time management at work and diversity of offices duties.

This learning experience, helped me increase my self esteem and my knowledge to supporting, cover a variety of offices administrations duties, provide support and advice to people when they request or have difficulty in filling documents. Allowed

me to learn a number of different new skills, like for example: creating a formal and commercial correspondence, provide a good customer service or work with a computer within the office environment (word, excel, access, power point), typing without looking at the key board, filling. Additionally, I learned that, things are not easy to achieve and adults are responsible to manage their own career and family needs. All actions have to be planned if the intention is to move towards positive results.

Third experience was my work in a heavy metal pub where the main purpose was to serve and satisfy customers from a strong unlike social culture. The pub’s customers were mainly from ‘an underground culture’, with different values and attitudes in life and with an extremely different external presentation from the one considered acceptable by the communal society. As a first experience in a pub, it can be said that it was relatively interesting as everything was new and I had to learn single function, step by step.

As a worker I learned how to serve meals and fill drinks to the customer’s as also, how to do customer services and maintain calm under pressure, added by how to maintain everything clean and tidy. Having to relate with them day by day, I learned that some kinds of social and cultural discriminations are totally unfair because people are judge based on their external appearance or music taste. The significance of this experience for me was that I became more flexible, with a more open mind regarding strong ‘sub-cultures’ if comparing with what is communal acceptable in our society.

Career success depends on situations that occur between the individual and the organization. However, measurements of success have changed to internal factors like psychological aspects of satisfaction: how individual perceives own career development in terms of values, goals, aspirations, recognition, self-esteem and actualization, together with external factors like, how career success is seen by others in terms of status, power, income and hierarchy. Consequently, it is important to look at the career targets in a wider life background. (Baruch, 2003)

Being less culturally discriminative and more open to the differences in my everyday social relations will improve my relationship with the different customers at the tourism industry. Also, it will enhance my standard of team work, because I easily will adapt to different ways of behaviours or peoples outer appearance avoiding false judgements. These new skills gained from the above three experience, are applied on my everyday duties like personal life management as alone parent with two children with the need of giving them an appropriate child discipline, education and when I manage my family budgeting or organize my time table. They are also used every time I have to support people or friends with documentation needs, since I have to: do research, give advice, provide information, do interpretation also, translation of documents and people, create formal letters to support facts or evidence. This allows me a variety of factors that will help in providing high level of work at the unpredictable and flexible tourism sector.

CAREER MANAGEMENT ACTION PLAN

At this section I will set three “Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-framed.” key objectives for the next twelve months and I will also, specify my action plan as well the time frame to achieve each objective.

Firstly, my aim is to find a part-time job as a tourist information assistant. I intend to do job research, put myself aware of the job roles and take a commitment to become the ideal candidate for the job position. So, I am going to do researches about job opportunities in leisure and culture departments of my local area, complete the jobs applications forms update and resume my cover letter, post or drop in my CV and prepare myself for the job vacancy with interview techniques and issues regarding health and safety skills. Also, I will commit myself to get a credential certificate as a tourism visitor information counsellor, by taking an online ’emerit’ training program where I will learn how to deal with transactions, develop negotiation and sales skills, which are going to help me indentify the diverse sectors in the tourism industry to better promote their products and services, thus grow to became an expert in service excellence.

Secondly, I want to finish my second year degree in international tourism management with good marks. Therefore, my plans will be to continue to work and improve my communicational skills in English. I will do critical readings, speaking the language more often and write a variety of pieces of work to help correcting my spellings, grammar and gaining self confidence. Enhance my ability to reach quality at the academic targets consequently, getting good results in the in-class test, exams

and essays which are going to contribute towards finishing my second year degree with high standard positive results. In addition, I am going to assist the majority of lectures and seminars, and also, take notes of relevant information, discuss any duties with colleagues and module tutors, maintain the three hours study period or increase to four hours a day if necessary. Since I am aware of my learning style ‘reflector’ result from Honey and Mumford’s learning style questionnaire, UEL Plus (2009) which confirm that I prefer to learn by consider, analyse and observe the activities from different perspectives. It is my intention to gain flexibility and diversity at learn, find the right tools to work and develop other learning preferences like for example: ‘theorist’ who prefers step-by-step work, ‘pragmatist’ who likes to confirm the applicability of an experience, ‘activist’ who new situations, problem solving are the main challenges.

Finally, I am going to be a candidate to be a generalist volunteer at the 2012 Olympic Games. Since the volunteer roles might be in areas such as event services, I will make myself aware of the actual progress of tourism industry and reached aims linked to the 2012 big event. I will explore about the requirements and vacancies held during the games, fill the registration forms, attend the workshops for tourism activities and update my knowledge of sports activities at the Olympic Games. Moreover, I am going to register to take a NCFE Level 2 certificate, a training and volunteer programme with health and safety, planning and organizing events skills, developed by the London Development Agency.

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The time frame for achievement of the three objectives is that: by the end of May 2010, reach my first purpose, since I already have started. All over the current academic year, until June 2010 reach the second objective. Plus, during the next twelve months until next November 2010, manage to have done researches, registration and application for tourism vacancies also, a training or qualification for being a volunteer at the 2012 events.

References:

e-books:

Baruch, Y. (2003) Managing Careers: Theory and Pratices, Harlow, PERSON EDUCATION, [Online]. Available at: http://dawsonera.com/ (acceded: 01 December 2009)

Conway N. And Briner R. (2005) Understanding psychological contracts at work: a critical evaluation of theory and research, OXFORD [Online]. Available at: http://books.google.com/ (Acceded: 29 November 2009)

Online resources:

Canadian Tourism Human Resource Council, (2008), ‘Tourism Visitor Information Counsellor training’, emerit [Online]. Available at: http://emerit.ca/en/products/all_products/ (accessed: 04 December 2009)

Graduate Prospects, (2009), ‘Tourism officer’ Prospects [Online]. Available at: http://www.prospects.ac.uk/ (accessed: 26 November 2009)

HR2012, (2009). Learning Styles Questionnaire, WK 8, UEL Plus [Online]. Available at: http://uelplus.uel.ac.uk/ (accessed: 26 November 2009)

Job Family: Leisure, Sport and Tourism, (2009) ‘Tourist information centre’ assistants, Jobs4u [online]. Available at: http://connexions-direct.com/jobs4u/ (accessed: 25 November 2009)

Redbridge Council, ‘leisure-culture/olympics_2012/volunteering’ Redbridge [Online]. Available at: http://cms.redbridge.gov.uk/ (accessed: 04 December 2009)

Tumbashire Council, (2009). ‘Casual Tourism Assistant’, Advertising, files/3802/File/PDt.pdf, Tumbshire [Online]. Available at: http://tumbashire.nsw.gov.au/ (accessed: 25 November 2009)