The primary purpose of this assignment is to develop a personal development plan, while simultaneously appraise of my career so far and as well as to clarity my plans.
My ultimate goals are to be become a qualified Accountant in the near future. I intend to join two societies with the purpose of enhancing my interpersonal, networking and specialist knowledge skills.
Over the last decade I have worked in various roles within the retail factor specially in Customer Service role, the role boosted my confidence level also helped me to improve the following skills: dealing with challenging customer complains, conflict management(customers, peers) coaching people, how to give contracting feedback to peers, time management.
I have always worked hard to gain as many qualifications as possible, I’ve done short qualification courses (City and Guild bookkeeping’s, IAS Accounting and Finance) in order to close the education gap which helped me to put my feet back in to my studies after long time. I also did GCSE Maths and English last year
In terms of my strengths, working with numbers is my biggest strength, if I don’t know something I always seek help from experts or peers, I don’t give up easily and I always have positive attitude which helped me to be here because when I first came to the country language was the barrier to my learning but my determination about my studies helped me to be here today.
In my current situation I have many weaknesses. My main weakness is the time management because I’m still working full time (I have reduced some hours) because I look after my family as well, so the responsibly and the work load I have is giving pressure to my studies therefore I’m still considering to reduce more hours after November which will help me to give more time for my studies but I am managing the time by planning ahead at the movement I’ll have to improve more on that. Long gap in my studies is the other weakness but I believe by reading more and giving more time for my studies will help to get more skills.
My working field is not related to my studies and the pressure I get from work is also make me tired because I deal with customer complaints and also work as an Financial Assistant so I’m learning to delegate the work load to my peers so this will help me to get the balance work and the studies from now onwards, by nest semester I should be more relaxed to concentrate even more in my studies, next weakness is writing I still have some issues with my writing skills so I’ve started reading more books and also we have got support class as well with this degree course so my plan is to use the support class tutor as my mentor for the next two years.
I strongly believe the biggest opportunity that I have now is my course Lectures, virtual Library (eg: Student portal ,Athens)and the internet the next opportunity is my employer John Lewis, John Lewis is one of the leading retailer in United Kingdom I’m so proud about working in John Lewis, I’ve got people(Personal team, Learning and Development Coach, Mentor)there to helping me with my personal development and work related skills development.
Even though I had all the interests about my future and my studies I couldn’t continue my studies because of my family commitment and the financial difficulties. Finance was my biggest threats for the last few years then I decided to get the student Finance and got it so my tuition fee is covered by them but my family commitments are still a big threat for me. Next threat I’m facing is the economy crises.
I m going to work harder to get higher degree towards the end of the course, I’ll update my PDP every 3 months to make sure I’m sticking with my plan in order to reach my goal.
by
kovika (student)
