The Best way to carry out a Situational Analysis is to update your Resume. Make sure you have a clean and updated copy of your current Resume and not just an old copy with changes all over the place. Start by rethinking the whole document and udpating it.

The Resume must have the following structure. However I understand that in some countries or functional areas like ICT it could have some variations which must be undersood and taken into account:

PROFESIONAL RESUME

I.     IDENTIFICATION DATA

II.    EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND

III.   SHORT TERM CAREER OBJECTIVE

IV.  SKILLS SET

V.   CAREER PATH HISTORY

VI.  RELEVANT TRAINING

VII.  REFERRALS

LINK TO YOUR LINKEDIN PROFILE

NOTE: If you want to help yourself just load your data over www.Linkedin.com which will proeduce one the best resumes ready to be sent either in URL or PDF. If you are unemployed you even can try my own marketing portal www.elegibles.com which certainly will prepare you for the kind of question you will have to answer in an interview.

DEFINITIONS

Situational Analysis: The Process of determining where are you right now in the Path that started the year of graduation and your long term objective. Obviously here we have a problem with recent graduates which probably will not even now what their short term objectives are, much less long term. The problem will vary from country to country but as we get into underdeveloped countries its graduates are more inclined to be lost due to lack of orientation, very weak industrial market and not so good professors and schools.

Launching a Career is just like being a Christopher Columbus: Launching your ship into the Sea and navigating toward a destination?. That is where the problem is. And before you launch your ship into the water, you must decide in which functional sea you will navigate.

Is your Career being driven by Random Process or by your own decisions? When you make decisions are this based on temporary needs of having an income or based on your aspirations, dreams and strenghs. Make sure to know yours weakness and never take jobs that expose them. Also never take jobs in areas you do not like.

Career Objectives are dynamic and time depending on your current age. The Most critical period are the 16 years between 24 year of age and 40. Your Career Objective is centered around technical expertise or around management aspirations? If you get into the forties and you yourself are not yet a manager, forget it since you just lost your potential.

That is why you cannot waste your time rotating around companies and decisions that will not produced results but an image of instability. Tenure must be on average not minimal of 2 years per company.