Personal Strategy Guidelines

Personal Strategy Description: The Personal Strategy is an opportunity for you to apply course concepts to your own personal strategy. Every graduate needs a strategy to help him/her compete for initial positions in the job market, as well as needing a strategy for how to further advance their career in the years to come. Although career will likely be a primary focus for most of you, you may want to consider other life goals that will enable you to maintain a healthy balance. If you haven’t done a good assessment of yourself and the challenges the external environment may present and you haven’t identified your sustainable advantages, you will likely not optimize your career or life potential. This exercise will enable you to apply course concepts to identify your vision/mission, analyze your strengths and weaknesses, consider your options, and determine how you can leverage your core competencies to achieve your goals in spite of challenging external environment forces. Personal Strategy Write-up Objectives: The objectives of this write-up are: • Apply frameworks presented in the course to analyze and formulate strategies for your personal strategy. • Use effective business writing techniques. • Develop a personal strategy that can guide your future. Suggested Outline of the Personal Strategy: I. Vision and Mission A. Vision - an overall life goal that is overarching and long term B. Mission - this identifies your purpose and how you will “compete” to achieve your vision II. Strategic Analyses A. Analysis of the general environment - factors that may either positively or negatively impact your ability to achieve your vision/mission or strategic objectives. Scenario analysis can be a good tool here if you see several significant external factors that could impact your personal life and career. B. Personal analysis of core competencies and resources that may give you a competitive advantage. III. Strategy Formulation A. Strategic Objectives – specific goals that ope-rationalize your mission and have defined time frames for completion B. How will you keep on track to have a successful life journey? – Here are some questions you might ask yourself: • Career: o How do you, as a Marquette graduate, position yourself to compete for jobs with other graduates from many schools around the country? o How can you differentiate yourself? o What is your competitive advantage? o How will you keep your career on track? o How will you continue to grow professionally? • Personal: o What is important to you? Family, faith, community, health, causes, travel, personal enrichment, etc.? o Where can you add value to help others? o How do you continue to grow personally? o How do you maintain life balance? o What is the life legacy you want to leave? C. How will you measure your success? Grading: All complete efforts will receive the full 40 points if the due date is met and good writing mechanics are used.                                                                                      

Sample Solution