Personal Career profile

In the previous section, you worked on your personal profile (Know yourself) and you may have already thought about a position, a certain type of work or a specific organisation that you might find interesting. In this section, you will try to make your Personal career profile more concrete by doing a number of assignments.

PERSONAL CAREER PROFILE:

Your personal career profile consists of a combination of what you have to offer (personal profile) and what is required (labour market). The better you are able to formulate both, the better you will be able to make a match and find a suitable job. In this sense, you determine "your own labour market".

Which job is the most suitable for you is a big question that can be divided into several smaller questions on which you can find more information on this page:
> Personal Career Profile

Assignment: 

• Read the information about the Personal Career Profile.
• What do you already know about your 'own labour market' or specifically a job that would suit you? 
• Look for at least three vacancies that appeal to you for whatever reason (think of organisation, tasks, competencies, etc.). Describe what appeals to you and why.
   
• Look at the information regarding Career prospects on your programme page and also check what kind of jobs alumni of your programme have. You can also find inspiration for yourself in other professions you can think of.
  On the Career zone you will also find more information about labour market developments and fields of work.
• What appeals to you more/less? Specify this in the sections of the Personal Career Profile, so for one job you might be interested in the organisation, the other the sector and/or the content of the work, and so on.
• You can easily find alumni of Leiden University and your programme via LinkedIn (see also later in this module). Search for three people with an interesting job and take a look at their profile and what does their career path look like?

Types of work (role)

• Which activities / type of work do you like or are interesting to do?
• What type of work fields or jobs could suit you?

Type of organisation

• What can you already describe with regard to a type of organisation that appeals to you? Take a look at these branches, for example.
• Are there already specific organisations that appeal to you? Why? What do they have in common? Is it, for example, regarding themes or values?
  (Tip: Are you interested in an organisation and do you want to know what similar organisations are out there? Via LinkedIn you can find related organisations on the page of a specific organisation in the right-hand column).

People

• Describe what you find important in your contact with other people? Think for example about experiences in the private sphere, side jobs and studies.

Working conditions

• Which terms of employment are important to you in your search for a suitable job?
   
• Fill in the Personal Career profile in your Career Planning workdocument for what you can already determine based on current information and Personal profile. Put a question mark if you do not yet have an idea of something such as "working conditions" or "role". These are matters to investigate further.