Write a 10 pages paper on my personal career strategy. I recognized that merely picturing or thinking of such a career is not enough. I needed to take concrete action plans and enhance my current skills and knowledge through the utilization of various useful tools and concepts. This course has taught me many of these various tools and concepts. In this first part, I will endeavor to expound on the usefulness of such tools and concepts. In the second part of this assignment, I will discuss how increasing my self-awareness will help me build a successful career.

In the past, according to M. B. Arthur and D. M. Rosseau (1996), the “dominant employment form” appeared to be the “organizational career”. In this view, “the meaning of careers…was subordinated” to the organizations. However, such a view is no longer dominant. With the rapid changes in the business environment, calls for other forms of career had been rising and have resulted in other forms that are more responsive to the current times. Two of these are the boundaryless career and the protean. Defillippi and Arthur (1994, as cited by Arthur and Rosseau, 1996) defined the boundaryless career as “sequences of job opportunities that go beyond the boundaries of single employment settings”. A boundaryless career “emphasizes the organizational perspective on examining the changing nature of careers” (Fernandez and Enache, 2008). On the other hand, a protean career is a career that is “managed by the person, not the organization” with the ultimate goal of “psychological success” (Hall and Moss, 1998, as cited by Sims and Veres, editors, 1999). The protean career emphasizes “self-direction and values-driven predispositions” (Briscoe, Hall and DeMuth, 2006, as cited by Fernandez and Enache, 2008). Thus, the individual is the one who is ultimately in charge of the future direction of his / her chosen career. The organization is just there to provide the venue for the individual’s career advancement.