COMPASS Resources

The Career Management Process has 4 quadrants, each focusing on a different part of your career development.

• You might start in the Self Assessment quadrant (upper left) if you're unclear about your interests, skills, work values, or type of work environment you would work well in. You can do self assessment testing (in a class, with a career counselor or from web or book exercises).
• If you have a good idea about you and what you want from a job but need to find out more about the realities of a job or career field or a particular work environment, then you might want to focus on the Career Exploration techniques listed in the upper right quadrant of the model.
• Once you have a good idea of what you want, then you'll want to develop a short and long term career plan and path for yourself; this is the type of activities that the Goal Setting and Skill Development quadrant (lower right) focuses on.
• And if you're in the process of finding a new job or career, then you'll want to focus on the Job Search/Self Promotion tools mentioned in the lower left quadrant.

There is no one right place to start in the process. It all depends on what you need in your career development now and in the near future. Over your lifetime you will probably focus on all the quadrants multiple times.