Edition 65 - What goes in a Career Action Plan

This week has been hectic, not going to lie, so I'm stoked that in this edition of Pondering Careers I get to take a little breather, a pause for a minute to ask what we should be putting in a Career Action Plan.

For the past year or so, I've been thinking about what it might look like if we put together some career action plans.

It's not something you can just decide to wake up and do, because there's simply so much to think about, but now that we're about to launch the pilot versions of the plans we have put together I wanted to take a moment to talk about what other people put in their Career Action Plans, and what we've put in ours.

Personally, I love them, IF they're done well. A good Career Action Plan (also known as a 'CAP') helps a young person gather all their ideas and information into the one place, gives them a structure to work through everything, and also makes it super easy for other people to get involved without taking over.

I'm also really excited to see the ones we've been creating come to life - we're at the stage where we're starting to test them with real-live teenagers, and there's nothing quite as satisfying as when a teenager actually wants to use something you've made, without immediately telling you all the things that are wrong with it.

Ah, I just love how blunt teens can be.

Ok, so this edition starts out with our journey, then goes into what they are and why we need them, a bit of a summary of what 'good' looks like, and then I'll go over what we've put in ours - so skip ahead if there's a bit you're particularly interested in.

What is a 'Career Action Plan'?

Essentially, they are planning documents used by students to help them identify possible career options, and then make a plan to achieve them.

Often used in the final three or four years of school, they're supposed to be dynamic (ie. regularly updated) documents that are owned and managed by the students. In reality, they're often looked at once a year (or once in total), and managed and maintained by the school. Which makes sense, because teens and teachers are both pretty busy and unless you've got a super proactive and motivated kid there's a good chance it was never going to happen.

They are still pretty useful however as a thinking exercise, and the information within them can be super useful for a student just in putting everything in the one place.

As the Victorian Department of Education describes:

"When students create or update their plan at least annually, their secondary schooling is punctuated with important opportunities to:

• discover their strengths and talents
• explore the world of work and their place in it
• identify their values and interests
• decide on their career and learning goals and pathway
• take steps toward their goals."

Personally, I feel that they do a great job of straightening out a person's ideas. There's something about having to write things down that helps you work out how important things really are, and, when written well, they can foster reflection and generate insights as part of the process.

Ideally, a young person would sit down with a qualified Career Development Practitioner to put together their Career Action Plan, or failing that, they could complete it with a teacher who knows them and has had some training in holding career conversations.

What do they look like?

Sometimes when we develop programs and resources it's because we've identified a need - a gap, where it would be great if we had something to share. But for the Career Action Plans it was more about the fact that we had so many schools ask us if we had them, that we felt we better get our backsides into gear and put something together.

At the start of last year, we started collecting examples of Career Action Plans from around the world. We ended up with over 50 examples, some of which had been created pretty recently, but some had been in use in pretty much the same format for the past decade (or longer).

The first thing we noticed is that it was clear there are already great CAPs out there in some parts of the world, and I hate reinventing the wheel, so we started our own process by looking for what's already working well.

After the review process, we were able to break them into a couple of themes:

1. The Resume CAP - basically a list of activities, achievements, and work experience,
2. The 'Who Am I?' CAP - these ones go deep into skills, strengths, and interests, but they often don't actually do anything with this information,
3. The Subject Selection CAP - a bit like the Resume CAP, these ones are all about academic performance and choices, and
4. The All-Rounder CAP - these had a little bit of everything, so they would often start with a 'Who Am I?' section, then move onto goals and plans, and finish up with some specific actions.

They also vary in other ways:

Length

Some are long, some are short - the longest was about 40 pages (yikes!) but we found some good ones that covered most things in about 3 pages, although these were a bit squished up.

Type of input

Some had lots of space for blocks of text, others were more of a tick-and-flick exercise.

I'll explain more later, but wherever possible we avoid the large text spaces simply because of how overwhelming they can be. Wherever possible we're looking to reduce the cognitive load for the young person, so they can focus on their decisions and not on their writing skills.

Year Levels

Some providers published a CAP for each year level, others offered just the one document which presumably covered everyone. Interestingly, many of the examples which had a CAP for each year level didn't actually vary the questions or the content between the year levels.

Goal Setting (or a lack thereof)

We also noticed that there was a really big difference in how the providers had perceived the purpose of the CAP. Some included large sections for goal setting, including space for analysis, reflection, and accountability, while others used the document as a record for tracking career plans and progress.

If there was a planning or goals section this really varied in it's level of specificity as well; so some would just ask the student whether or not they were doing work experience, while others would ask the student where they were going, how long they would be there for, what they hoped to gain from it, etc.

Amount of in-built learning

I feel like this factor was really what dictated the length of the CAP. The ones that built in learning and reflection moments throughout the document were often longer, but I felt like this was probably a good thing.

Some of the shortest ones were overwhelming not due to their length, but because there was little context, and unless the student was working through the document with a trained Career Development Practitioner there's a good chance they would have become lost. Some of the best were also quite long, but they included tips and additional reflection prompts along the way.

But reviewing what already existed is only part of the puzzle, so, at the same time we conducted an independent process to determine what we felt should be covered in a CAP at each stage of the schooling journey.

This is where Ponder came in

Fortunately, we were already in the middle of reviewing the scope and sequence for the Ponder Program at that time, which breaks down what each student should be covering at each year level (based on the Australian Blueprint for Career Development and the CDI's Career Development Framework), so we used that document to guide us in working out what to include in our own CAPs.

We designed Ponder to be delivered across four Modules:

• Understanding yourself
• Understanding your context
• Exploration
• Connection

And when we brought everything together it became clear that we really need to be following the same pattern with the four sections in our CAPs, and this is what we have done.

It also made sense to call them Ponder Plans for a few reasons; First, and obviously, they follow the same Framework as Ponder, and they're not purely about 'career'. Just like within the Ponder Program, we ask students to think about a range of things related to their entire lives, as, after all, their career will be just one part of their lives, so we wanted to move away from the idea of them being all about 'career' and 'action'.

So, now we have Ponder Plans that walk students through some pretty deep but year-level appropriate stuff.

Now we know what they are, why do we need them?

At first glance, a Career Action Plan (CAP) might just seem like another document for students to fill out—something they complete because the school says they have to. But when designed well, these plans are much more than that. They provide a structured way for young people to make sense of their career journey, helping them see where they are now, where they might want to go, and the steps they can take to get there.

More importantly, a well-thought-out plan gives students a sense of agency. It takes career exploration—something that can feel vast, uncertain, and intimidating—and breaks it down into something tangible and manageable. Instead of career conversations being vague, students can map out their thinking in a clear and structured way.

What Do They Actually Do?

At their core, Career Action Plans serve a few key purposes:

1. They create a central place for career thinking. Without a CAP, a student’s career ideas might be scattered across different conversations, fleeting thoughts, or occasional classroom activities. A CAP gathers all of this into one place, making it easier for them to build on previous thinking and revisit their ideas as they grow and change.
2. They encourage reflection and self-awareness. One of the biggest challenges in career development is that students don’t always know what they want—or even how to figure it out. A CAP prompts them to reflect on their skills, interests, and experiences, encouraging them to think critically about what matters to them and what they might want in the future.
3. They introduce structure into career planning. Thinking about a career can be overwhelming. There are so many options, so many decisions, and so many pathways that it’s easy to get stuck in analysis paralysis. A CAP provides a structured approach, guiding students through each stage of exploration and decision-making without making it feel like an all-or-nothing commitment.
4. They help teachers and families support students. A CAP is not just for the student—it also helps the people around them provide better guidance. Whether it’s a career advisor, a teacher, or their family, having a written record of a student’s career thoughts makes it easier for others to offer meaningful support. It also allows teachers and advisors to track progress over time, ensuring that career conversations aren’t just one-offs.
5. They make career conversations more meaningful. Instead of having to start from scratch every time a student meets with a career advisor or teacher, a CAP provides a foundation for deeper discussions. Rather than just asking, “So, what do you want to do after school?” (a question that often leads to blank stares), advisors can dive straight into specific interests, potential challenges, and actionable next steps.
6. They promote action and goal-setting. A good CAP doesn’t just ask students to dream—it helps them set clear, achievable goals and take real steps towards their future. Whether that’s booking work experience, researching courses, or developing specific skills, a CAP can turn vague aspirations into concrete plans.
7. They build confidence. One of the biggest barriers to career decision-making is uncertainty. By working through a CAP, students start to see that they do have control over their future and that career planning isn’t about having all the answers right away—it’s about making informed decisions step by step.

This is exactly why we decided to call our versions Ponder Plans. We wanted to move away from the idea that students need to have everything figured out or that a career plan is something rigid and final. Instead, our plans focus on pondering—encouraging students to think deeply, reflect on their lives as a whole (not just careers), and explore possibilities without feeling locked in.

At the end of the day, a well-designed CAP (or Ponder Plan) isn’t just a document—it’s a tool that empowers students to take ownership of their career journey, make informed choices, and develop a clearer sense of who they are and what they want. And that’s why they matter.

Ready to take a peek at ours?

So, as I said at the start, these babies have been in the works for quite some time, which makes me pretty nervous about sharing them with the world (because what if you don't like them!?!?!) but I'm finally at a stage where I'm happy with them.

There are four sections in each

The same four sections you'll find in the Ponder Program. This is actually one of the things I'm most excited about in the Ponder Plans, because it means they're completely interoperable with the lessons in the program. If you're already teaching the program, you could just visit the corresponding sections in the Ponder Plan as you move through the content, or if you're using the Plans and notice that your students need to cover some additional content you could simply use the corresponding Program lesson.

Each Ponder Plan starts out with a section on Understanding Yourself. This gives them a space to think about their strengths, skills, Clusters, and interests, before they dive into the rest of the plan. We also put some questions about values and lifestyle expectations into this section for the older year levels, so they are prompted to think about how work will fit into their lives (and not the other way around).

Next, we talk about Understanding Your Context, which gives us a space to identify the people and things we have around us. This section is so important because without it there's no way for them to work out who they can look to for support, or how they can build on the resources they have available around them when working out what to do next.

The section on Exploring the Options is often the biggest, because this is where students do the work of identifying jobs, courses, qualifications, and pathways and then finding the details they need to move forward. The previous two sections should have primed them to be thinking about their strengths, skills, and assets, so they should be able to bring this understanding to their exploration process.

Finally, we talk about Connecting it all together, asking 'what's next?' and prompting students to think about all the things they need to do before they can move to the next stage of their journey.

They're as long as they need to be (and not longer)

I've tried to keep them as short as absolutely possible, so Year 12 is the largest with 14 pages in total, but Years 9 to 11 are just ten pages long, and the junior Ponder Plans for Year 6, 7, and 8 are 5 pages each.

We've covered what we need to at each stage without going too deep, so they have enough information recorded to be able to move onto the next stage, but we don't ask them to figure things out earlier than they need to. It's a fine balance, but it means we can respect the students (and the people helping them fill it out).

Because they're designed to line up with the Ponder Program lessons we haven't added as much learning content as we might have done if they were supposed to be stand-alone documents, but there's still enough information, guidance and reflection in there that someone could complete it by themselves.

Reducing cognitive load

Wherever possible, I try to reduce the cognitive load with the type of questions we use and how we scaffold them, so that students can concentrate on thinking about the career development stuff, not on how they're going to fill out massive open text spaces.

My absolute preference is for checkboxes - that way, they can literally think about the options and make a decision about them. They haven't had to come up with the answers, just evaluate them.

I also like to scaffold the questions where I can, so the earlier questions uncover information which can then be used to inform later questions, which means they're not trying to make multiple long cognitive leaps to get to the answers because we've already primed them to think about each part of the process.

They're just about ready to test

We're in the midst of completing our internal testing and evaluation process (which, of course, always takes longer than we hope), but in the next few weeks we'll start sharing them for some pilot testing in schools.

Once we've made any adjustments after the pilot process, we'll set them off into the world, but I'd really like to take them online as well. I've already started putting together a learning flow that is intuitive and adjusts depending on what the learner has already done, and where they are in the career exploration process, which would mean they could go deeper with fewer questions and we could integrate learning into the process along the way.

But that's for later in the year, for now, I'm just excited about seeing how these Ponder Plans land.

If you're considering your own Career Action Plan process, my one suggestion above all else would be to centre the needs of the learner in the process. Throughout our work, we've always returned to what the students need, and what will serve them best, and I feel like, as long as you get that bit right, the rest will fall into place.