The Significance of SWOT Analysis in Personal Career Development

SWOT Analysis

SWOT Analysis refers to a platform for understanding weakness, Strengths, Opportunities and threats that one face. In the context of an individual, it helps individuals develop careers that take the best advantage of abilities, talents, and opportunities.

Academic and Professional Skills Development SWOT analysis

Critical Reflection

Higher education enables learners to pursue a career that interests and inspires them. It creates more advancement opportunities, though it requires high accountability. Therefore, it needs learners who have effective learning abilities. Students who achieve significant learning are self-efficacy (Rowe, 2011; Lee & Mao, 2016), self-regulated, ability to use feedback, and resilience (Rowe, 2011). Through the SWOT analysis, I have realized that two challenges affect my studies; group work and time management. Therefore, in this reflection, I will identify why group work and time management are challenges and strategies that I will use to overcome these challenges and succeed in my learning.

The initial challenge is my inability to manage time. Time management is described as planning and organizing how to divide individual time between specific activities (Adams & Blair, 2019). Effective time management enables individuals to work smarter, thus enabling individuals to do more in less time, regardless of tight schedules and pressures. It is a critical resource in learning which allows us to manage our resources and ourselves (Adams & Blair, 2019). Moreover, time management is a vital skill for a learner like me as it creates ‘achievement’ of long-term and short-term objectives. Therefore, it is critical to academic success. In most times, I found myself being a poor timekeeper; thus, my general awareness of time could make me a better student. From my previous experience, I have found myself struggling with my time management because of self-doubt, procrastination, many schedules, and perfectionist tendencies. Moreover, regardless of my attempts to improve, I always find it challenging to do so. Therefore, I should improve my decision-making speed since I take long to make a final decision on my professional and personal issues. The slow decision-making while trying to achieve perfection may hurt my career. Therefore, I intend to focus more on managing my time to ensure that I timely meet my schedules. Thus, time management can be improved by identifying wants and needs and the hierarchy needed concerning the task importance. Therefore, I hope to allocate time accordingly and also delegate work (Wang, 2019). Moreover, I need to set SMART goals, take regular breaks, and multitask in the future. Using these strategies will enable me to manage my time and promote my time management skills effectively.

The other challenge I am facing in my learning is team/group work. Group work, also known as teamwork, implies working together to complete projects and assessments (Benediktsson & Ragnarsdottir, 2019). It aims to prepare learners with collaborative skills required in the professional world. Besides, it enables individual work to be broken down into parts and steps that learners work through together. Group work is critical since it is an ‘educational mode’ that inspires socialization and learning amongst learners (Mittelmeier et al., 2018). The study also reveals that group work is critical in improving communication and promotes social skills such as listening and effective speaking. Moreover, it makes individuals be respectfully and confidently express their opinion and ideas effectively in a group setting. From my previous studies, I have often struggled with group work because of my introverted trait and increased inability to work in a team, especially where members are unwilling to participate accordingly and where time management is poor, impacting my schedules. Besides, my inability to participate effectively in group work can be improved by 'positive interdependence. Again, I plan to effectively define my roles in a group as indicated by Belbin's Team Roles which suggest that by understanding individual roles within a particular team, one can improve their strengths and manage weaknesses as a group member (Rahmani et al., 2021). Moreover, I will have a positive Mindset, manage my time efficiently, be enthusiastic, and not complain. These skills will be critical in enabling me to be encouraged and be willing to help my group members. Moreover, these strategies will help me pursue my overall goal, improve communication skills and help my participation be effective (Ivanova et al., 2020).

In conclusion, after the SWOT analysis, I have identified that some of the most significant challenges in my learning are my inability to work in a group and manage my time. However, I plan to overcome my time management skills by focusing more on managing my time to ensure that I timely meet my schedules, especially by creating a hierarchy. Also, I need to have a positive Mindset, manage my time efficiently, be enthusiastic, and not complain. These strategies and others would help me improve substantially in my learning and collaboration with other students for effective learning and skills development.

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References

Adams, R. V., & Blair, E. (2019). Impact of time management behaviours on undergraduate engineering students’ performance. SAGE Open, 9(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244018824506

Benediktsson, A. I., & Ragnarsdottir, H. (2019). Communication and Group Work in the Multicultural Classroom: Immigrant Students' Experiences. European Journal of Educational Research, 8(2), 453-465. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1213084

Ivanova, S., Dimitrov, L., Ivanov, V., & Scvorcova, S. (2020, October). Search Correspondence between the Roles of the Brainstorming Participants and Belbin's Team Roles. In 2020 III International Conference on High Technology for Sustainable Development (HiTech) (pp. 1-5). IEEE. DOI: 10.1109/HiTech51434.2020.9363982

Lee, P. C., & Mao, Z. (2016). The relation among self-efficacy, learning approaches, and academic performance: An exploratory study. Journal of Teaching in Travel & Tourism, 16(3), 178-194. https://doi.org/10.1080/15313220.2015.1136581

Mittelmeier, J., Rienties, B., Tempelaar, D., & Whitelock, D. (2018). Overcoming cross-cultural group work tensions: Mixed student perspectives on the role of social relationships. Higher Education, 75(1), 149-166. DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-017-0131-3

Rahmani, F., Scott-Young, C., Tadayon, A., & van der Walt, J. D. (2021). Team composition in relational contracting (RC) in large infrastructure projects: a Belbin’s team roles model approach. Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management. https://doi.org/10.1108/ECAM-11-2020-0941

Rowe, A. (2011). The personal dimension in teaching: why students value feedback. International Journal of Educational Management. https://doi.org/10.1108/09513541111136630

Wang, W. C. (2019). Exploring the relationship among free-time management, leisure boredom, and internet addiction in undergraduates in Taiwan. Psychological reports, 122(5), 1651-1665. https://doi.org/10.1177/0033294118789034