Personal Career Plan for:

Diptarghya Kundu
26 September 2017
Self Assessment – Mapping Your Objectives
Benefits of the self assessment exercises

This self assessment process is a structured and systematic approach to strategic career planning.

Working through the self assessment exercises associated with the course modules should have provided you
with more self awareness in relation to your career. This is important as it gives you focus, clarity and direction,
meaning you are more likely to be successful in your career ambitions.

The key areas of benefit from completing the course exercises are:

Interviewing for your next role

Knowing what career direction suits you will give you an enthusiasm which will impress employers. They will
assume that if you enjoy your role you will be better at it.

Changing career: industry, function or both

If you are considering changing career then you will have to convince an employer of your commitment to your
chosen path. Recruiters are wary of hiring people into a new area. You will need to demonstrate how your past
experience is relevant and why you are suited to the new function and/or industry. The exercises you have
completed should help you to gather this evidence.

Starting a business or going freelance

By having a clear understanding of yourself you can build a picture of the type of business you want to create,
explore the strengths you want to develop and work out how setting up a business would fit in with your long-term
aims.

Deciding on your summer project or internship

By understanding your career aspirations early on in the course you can start to look at which parts of your course
could assist you in getting valuable experience or making contacts which could help you secure the role you want.

Maximising your chance of securing the role you want

To get the most out of the work you have done to complete the Emlyon Maximiser course, we strongly
recommend that you:

Make time throughout the course to work on your career development.

Career networking and research takes time and regular attention to produce results.

Use the course exercises and this report as a guide and a starting point.
Use this report as a foundation on which to build your own research.

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What does success mean to you?
Helping myself to fulfill my passion to help others actively or passively as well as being compensated at a
satisfactory level - the opportunity of doing this defines my notion of a successful career.

Strengths
Evaluation of your skills and strengths is a key part of the interview process. Recruiters will be looking for evidence
of these in your experience to date. For example, you may say you have ‘great communication skills’ but could
you concisely answer the questions below in an interview?

‘How do you communicate complex issues to a general audience?’

‘Describe a situation when you have presented ideas to a group in a persuasive manner?’ ‘Explain how
you have varied your communication style to suit different situations or audiences?’

The strengths exercise has a dual purpose.

Firstly it aims to prepare you for explaining at interview those skills which you consider to be your strengths, and to
arm you with your best example of the skill about which you’re being asked. There is nothing more annoying than
walking out of an interview thinking, ‘Why didn’t I talk about my best example?!’

The second purpose of this exercise is to help you understand your top strengths, the ones you really enjoy using
and would like to building to your future career. Most people can do many different jobs and the challenge is to find
something you enjoy. Many people do an excellent job despite not enjoying their work; imagine how powerful they
would be if they used their skills to do something they did enjoy? So rather than concentrate on skills you have but
don’t necessarily enjoy, this exercise focuses on the skills you are good at and do enjoy. These are your
strengths.

Having completed this exercise, the key skills you wanted to take forward into your career
research were (ranked in order):

1. Innovation

2. Research

3. Problem Solving

4. Commitment

5. Motivation

6. Critical Thinking

7. Improvisation

8. Detail-oriented

9. Teamwork

10. Concentration

If you require more insight into your strengths, I recommend the book by Marcus Buckingham 'Now Discover Your
Strengths: How To Develop Your Talents And Those Of The People You Manage', published by Pocket Books.
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Values
Values can serve as a focus or a reference point for all the aspects of your life. It may not be necessary to orient
your life entirely around your values; however, it will be possible (and rewarding) to weave them into most aspects
of your life.

Acting as a reference point, values can help you to:

set clear goals for the future that are worthwhile and are important to you
improve the quality of your decisions
maintain your confidence when you feel confused or when you’re in a period of transition.

Obviously your work values are highly likely to overlap with your personal values. Our definition of work values is
‘those interests and qualities which you feel are important in an organisation’. The Values exercise is designed to
help you evaluate how consistent your current or past organisation is with your values. The results also provide a
foundation for evaluating organisations with whom you are interested in working.

Deciding Values

The exercise asked you to identify your core values and then provided you with a framework for ranking these
against each other.

Having completed this exercise, you identified your core values (ranked in order) as:

1. Vision

2. perseverance

3. Innovation

4. Honesty

5. Ambition

6. Diligence

7. Trustworthiness

8. Critical thinking

9. Nurturing

You should use these values as an anchor point for any job-hunting activities or career decisions you make in the
future.

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Interests
Interests can be a major factor in career choice. They might help you decide which industry to target or what type
of business to set up. Working in an industry or business, which incorporates your interests can make you feel
motivated to work harder and usually results in increased job satisfaction.

However sometimes interests should stay as hobbies. The questions asked in the Interests exercise were
intended to draw out your interests so that you could consider whether any of them should form part of your
career. The last couple of questions focussed around industry sector. We asked these questions because
preferably you should target industry sectors in which you are interested and which are growing.

Having completed this exercise, you identified the interests that you would like to incorporate into your
career research as being:

1. Pharmaceutical, chemical industry. Innovation and imagination - incorporate those two in the

strategy making and research related managerial position.

2.

3.

4.

5.

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Work Environment Preferences
In your next career move you will want to make a positive step and avoid the things that didn’t work for you in
your last role.

Also, don’t forget that when you interview with a company they are considering whether you will fit into their
working environment. Do you thrive in a big company environment? Would you be best suited to a small team?
etc.

Work Environment Exercise

In the Work Environment exercise we asked you to consider your previous roles and describe as fully as possible
those factors which made that role especially exciting or rewarding (those things you liked) and those elements
that made the role especially boring or frustrating (things you disliked).

We then asked you to use these descriptions to identify the key elements that need to be present for you to thrive
in your work environment.

1. Work-life balance

2. Challenge demanding creative ideas

3. Mutual respect

4.

5.

Previous Managers / Colleagues

Anyone who has ever had a bad manager would agree with the statement, 'A manager can make or break a job'.

At interview stage it is important to be thinking about compatibility with your future manager, and so we asked you
to emphasise the qualities you are looking for in your next manager and those which you want to avoid.

If you’re at a stage in your career where you’re expecting to join the leadership team of a company then the
results of this exercise are still relevant, as you’ll want to apply them when evaluating your colleagues on that
team. Your senior position may make these characteristics less important than they would be in a “manager”
situation; however this evaluation of team characteristics may be an important differentiator if you are choosing
between two or more similar roles.

We asked you to list the six most influential (positive or negative!) managers you’ve had in the past. Keeping this
list in mind we then asked you to list the positive characteristics you are looking for in future managers /
colleagues, and the negative characteristics you are seeking to avoid.

The positive / negative characteristics you wanted to find / avoid in future managers and colleagues were:

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 Positive Negative

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Long-Term Goals
Having an idea of your long-term goals will keep you focused on the bigger picture and act like an inner compass.
This is important for several reasons:

It will help with the career decisions you will inevitably have to make (e.g. deciding between two job
options). It is much easier to make difficult choices if you are clear on your long-term goals.
It will help you identify the skills you need to acquire or the actions you need to take to make your future
aspirations a reality.

This exercise asked you to consider your life as a whole. First we asked you to write down, in the present tense,
the way your life is right now. Then we asked you to write down what you’d like your life to look like in 5 years time
(and if you wanted to look further ahead, 10 and 15 years time too).

When you had completed the exercise we then asked you to reflect on everything you had written and indentify five
long-term goals that you would like to incorporate into your career strategy.

The long term goals you identified were:

1. Maybe start my own pharmaceutical business in India, if I feel I have enough experience down

the road, with enough contacts, resources and funding.

2.

3.

4.

5.

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Evaluation Matrix
With the self assessment exercises completed, you need a structure to bring everything together so that you can
use all this data to consistently evaluate the different career options you may be considering. The Career Farm
Evaluation Matrix gives you this structure.

We asked you to review the results of your work so far and select the key criteria against which you would like to
measure different careers.

You also had an opportunity to refine this process further by applying a weighting (2x or 3x) to any of the criteria.

With all your criteria identified, we then asked you to enter different career options and score them in each
category. The total score for each career option is shown in your completed Matrix, taking into account any
weightings you may have applied.

Choosing your next career is not a science, but we’re confident you will find this a much more systematic
approach than simply making ad hoc applications to different companies and industries.

Your criteria and weightings:

Criteria Weighting

Innovation 2

Research 1

Critical thinking 2

perseverance 1

Diligence 1

Nurturing 1

Pharmaceutical, chemical industry. Innovation and 2

imagination - incorporate those two in the strategy
making and research related managerial position.

Work-life balance 2

Mutual respect 1

Improvisation 1

Nurturing 1

Trustworthiness 1

Your job targets:

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 Job Target

Research Development Manager, Pharmaceutical industry

Research Development Manager, Chemical industry

Business Development Manager, Pharmaceutical industry

Business Development Manager, Chemical industry

Consulting, Pharmaceutical industry

Consulting, Chemical industry

Production manager, Pharmaceutical industry

Supply Chain Manager, Pharmaceutical industry

Strategy and Operations Manager, Pharmaceutical industry

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 Pharmaceutical, chemical industry. Innovation an

Work-life balance

Trustworthiness
Career Options

Critical thinking

Mutual respect
perseverance

Improvisation

Total Score
Innovation

Research

Diligence

Nurturing

Nurturing
Research 2 1 2 1 1 1 2 ? ? 1 1 ? 12
Development
Manager,
Pharmaceutical
Research 2 1 2 1 1 1 2 ? ? 1 1 ? 12
industry
Development
Manager, Chemical
industry
Business 2 1 2 1 1 ? ? ? ? 1 ? ? 8
Development
Manager,
Pharmaceutical
Business 2 1 2 1 1 ? ? ? ? 1 ? ? 8
industry
Development
Manager, Chemical
industry
Consulting, 2 1 2 1 1 ? 2 ? ? 1 ? ? 10
Pharmaceutical
industry
Consulting, ? 1 2 1 1 ? 2 ? ? 1 ? ? 8
Chemical industry

Production manager, ? ? ? 1 1 ? 2 ? ? 1 1 ? 6
Pharmaceutical
industry
Supply Chain ? 1 2 1 1 ? 2 ? ? 1 1 ? 9
Manager,
Pharmaceutical
industry
Strategy and 2 1 2 1 ? 1 2 ? ? 1 ? ? 10
Operations
Manager,
Pharmaceutical
industry
You should now be in a position to decide which career(s) to start investigating first. You may still not know how
some possible career options meet your criteria (the “?”s in your matrix). These queries should be starting points
for further research.

You should now be in a position to decide which career(s) to start investigating first. You may still not know how
some possible career options meet your criteria (the “?”s in your matrix). These queries should be starting points
for further research.

Your "unknowns" (?s):

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 Research Development Manager, Pharmaceutical Work-life balance
industry Mutual respect
Trustworthiness

Research Development Manager, Chemical industry Work-life balance

Mutual respect
Trustworthiness

Business Development Manager, Pharmaceutical Nurturing

industry Pharmaceutical, chemical industry.
Innovation and imagination - incorporate
those two in the strategy making and
research related managerial position.
Work-life balance
Mutual respect
Nurturing
Trustworthiness

Business Development Manager, Chemical industry Nurturing

Pharmaceutical, chemical industry.
Innovation and imagination - incorporate
those two in the strategy making and
research related managerial position.
Work-life balance
Mutual respect
Nurturing
Trustworthiness

Consulting, Pharmaceutical industry Nurturing

Work-life balance
Mutual respect
Nurturing
Trustworthiness

Consulting, Chemical industry Innovation

Nurturing
Work-life balance
Mutual respect
Nurturing
Trustworthiness

Production manager, Pharmaceutical industry Innovation

Research
Critical thinking
Nurturing
Work-life balance
Mutual respect
Trustworthiness

Supply Chain Manager, Pharmaceutical industry Innovation

Nurturing
Work-life balance
Mutual respect
Trustworthiness
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 Strategy and Operations Manager, Pharmaceutical Diligence
industry Work-life balance
Mutual respect
Nurturing
Trustworthiness

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Prioritising Job Targets
As your time is limited, to make the most of it you need to be highly focused. Prioritising your job targets achieves
this focus.

A job target has three aspects:

1. The Specific Function (e.g. corporate strategy, business development).

2. The Organisational Size and/or Industry (e.g. telecoms with over 5,000 employees).

3. Location (London, Milan, Hong Kong, etc).

Every time you change one of these aspects you have a new job target. You can have as many job targets as you
want, but they need to be prioritised or you will not be targeting opportunities in the order of importance to you.

Make sure your targets are not too broad. An industry like ‘fast moving consumer goods’ is too wide; you need to
break down the industry. You could target food companies, personal hygiene products, non-alcoholic drinks
companies, etc.

Be as specific as possible so you have a manageable number of companies to approach. Most new roles are
found by networking and direct marketing. To use these two approaches effectively you need to have a defined
list of companies to approach. By listing your company targets and being clear on what kind of role you are
looking for, you will be more systematic in your job hunting campaign.

Now you have decided on the order in which you will start your job hunting you can begin to market and position
yourself to ‘Get Interviews’.

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 Job Target 1

Position/function Research Development Manager

Organisational size or industry Pharmaceutical industry

Geographic Area Europe, North America

List of companies to approach 1. Bayer

2. Boehringer-Ingelheim

3. Novartis

4. Roche

5. Pfizer

6. Gilead Sciences

7. Bristol-Myers Squibb

8. Sanofi

9. Johnson & Johnson

10. Merck

Job Target 2

Position/function Business Development Manager

Organisational size or industry Pharmaceutical industry

Geographic Area Europe, North America

List of companies to approach 1. Bayer

2. Boehringer-Ingelheim

3. Novartis

4. Roche
5. Pfizer

6. Gilead Sciences

7. Bristol-Myers Squibb

8. Sanofi

9. Johnson & Johnson

10. Merck

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 Job Target 3

Position/function Research Development Manager

Organisational size or industry Chemical industry

Geographic Area Europe, North America

List of companies to approach 1. BASF

2. Bayer

3. DuPont

4. Dow Chemical

5. Shell

6. AzkoNobel

7. Evonik Industries

8. Solvay

9. Chevron Phillips Chemical

10. Syngenta

Job Target 4

Position/function Supply Chain Manager

Organisational size or industry Chemical industry

Geographic Area Europe, North America

List of companies to approach 1. BASF

2. Boehringer-Ingelheim

3. DuPont

4. Dow Chemical

5. Shell

6. AzkoNobel

7. Evonik Industries

8. Solvay

9. Chevron Phillips Chemical

10. Syngenta

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 Job Target 5

Position/function Strategy and Operations Manager

Organisational size or industry Pharmaceutical industry

Geographic Area Europe, North America

List of companies to approach 1. Bayer

2. Boehringer-Ingelheim

3. Novartis

4. Roche

5. Pfizer

6. Gilead Sciences

7. Bristol-Myers Squibb

8. Sanofi

9. Johnson & Johnson

10. Merck

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APPENDIX 1 – Detailed Responses to the Strengths
Exercise
We first asked you to think of 6 events in your life when you have really enjoyed doing something and been good
at it; times when you felt immersed in what you were doing and were proud of the results.

Your 6 events were:

1. My parents wanted me to be a doctor. I cracked the entrance exam and pursued the study for a

month. But didn't like it and got back to pursue the academics major i.e. Chemistry that I wanted to

see myself in.

2. My contribution during my research career in Canada as a graduate research assistant in

publishing international publications.

3. Presenting my research in the biggest Organic Chemistry conference (Pacifichem) in the world in

Hawaii, 2015.

4. Solving a research problem, left by a senior researcher, by continuously working for a couple of

months and leading a team of novices to success.

5. Joining a research project as the newest guy to work for, learning from the senior guys and

finally contributing the most to be the first author of the publication.

6. After my mom's death and dad's heart transplant, left my PhD career in Canada to take care of

the family issues. It was distressing in terms of career and personal life hardships. Proud to find a

strategy to get back on feet to control my career growth, prepare for an international MBA and

pursuing the same in WHU.

You then identified the strengths you used in these events. Finally, you ranked these strengths against each other.

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Your strengths to carry forward into your career research:

1. Innovation - 7

2. Research - 7

3. Problem Solving - 6

4. Commitment - 6

5. Motivation - 6

6. Critical Thinking - 5

7. Improvisation - 4

8. Detail-oriented - 2

9. Teamwork - 1

10. Concentration - 1

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APPENDIX 2 – Detailed Responses to the Interests
Exercise
Your responses to the Interests exercise were:

What do you do in your leisure time?

Poetry writing, novel or scientific publication reading, watching movies or tv series.

If you have a spare half hour at lunchtime what do you do?

Reading novels, or chatting with friends.

Are you passionate about any of your interests?

scientific publication reading

Do you have knowledge or relative expertise in an area that you have built up, just because
you are interested in it?

Development in some specific areas of science

What books or magazines do you read? If you went into a bookshop, what sections would
you look in?

Natural science magazines - Nature, Science, Science fiction based books. Science, science fiction sections.

What section of the newspaper do you turn to first?

Politics, Sports.

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 Have you ever volunteered for work or assignments?

No

Are you interested in any particular industry sector?

Pharmaceutical, Chemical, Biotech.

Which industry sectors do you think are growing or have potential for growth?

Chemical, pharmaceutical, finance.

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APPENDIX 3 – Detailed Responses to the Work
Environment Exercise

Position:

Graduate Research Assistant

Liked:

The challenges to think innovatively, coming up with hypothesis, planning and implementation, assess the
results and learn from them to apply in following steps, mentoring junior researchers.

Disiked:

No personal-professional life balance, not enough mutual respect.

Position:

Graduate Teaching Assistant

Liked:

Helping undergraduate students to find their interests, sometimes find their career goals.

Disiked:

Not so challenging, restricted to orthodox ideas/methods.

Your ideal work environment contains:

1. Work-life balance

2. Challenge demanding creative ideas

3. Mutual respect

4.

5.

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 The managers you selected were:

Positive / Negative Characteristics:

Positive Negagive

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APPENDIX 4 – Detailed Responses to the Long Term
Goals Exercise

THE YEAR IS 2017 MY AGE IS 31

Tell me what your life is like right now International MBA student- sometimes stressful, sometimes
enjoyable.

Who are your friends? What do they do Fellow classmates, old college/university ex-classmate friends.
for a living? Doing post-docs, R & D scientists.

What is your financial position? Financially independent with the savings done during graduate
studies and online tutoring, unemployed right now.

What does your personal life look like? (if Have a girlfriend, staying in India. Long distance relationship for
you have children, how old are they?) the moment. Planning to get married by the end of MBA
program. No children.

Where are you living? What does it look Dusseldorf, in a 3-WG. Personal bedroom, shared kitchen,
like? washroom- sharing with one German, one Vietnamese student.

What are your hobbies and interests? Novel reading, studying science related magazines.

What kind of work are you doing? Studying MBA.

What else would you like to note about Balance between studies and long distance relationship.
your life right now?

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 THE YEAR IS 2022 MY AGE IS 36

Tell me what your life is like right now Life is stable personally (having a family) and professionally
(with a job with good compensation yet work-life balance, still
offering challenges and demand for innovation )

Who are your friends? What do they do I wanna stay in touch with my old friends and maybe make
for a living? friends along the path during past 5 years.

What is your financial position? Financially stable and improving.

What does your personal life look like? (if I wanna see myself as married with my long-term girlfriend, have
you have children, how old are they?) a kid (maybe 2 years old or so)

Where are you living? What does it look In our own house/apartment in Europe (Germany, Netherlands,
like? Luxembourg) or in the US/Canada.

What are your hobbies and interests? Studying novels, scientific magazines, going for long drive with
family, or going on vacation.

What kind of work are you doing? I am in a Pharma/Chemical industry as a Business

Development/Research Development managerial position.

What else would you like to note about Peaceful and stable- unlike before.
your life right now?

THE YEAR IS 2027 MY AGE IS 41

Tell me what your life is like right now

Who are your friends? What do they do

for a living?

What is your financial position?

What does your personal life look like? (if

you have children, how old are they?)

Where are you living? What does it look

like?

What are your hobbies and interests?

What kind of work are you doing?

What else would you like to note about

your life right now?

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 THE YEAR IS 2032 MY AGE IS 46

Tell me what your life is like right now

Who are your friends? What do they do

for a living?

What is your financial position?

What does your personal life look like? (if

you have children, how old are they?)

Where are you living? What does it look

like?

What are your hobbies and interests?

What kind of work are you doing?

What else would you like to note about

your life right now?

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 The Career Farm helps people achieve a successful and fulfilling career by giving
them the skills and resources to develop their own career strategy.

Our team includes highly experienced careers coaches who specialise in career
development within the corporate sector and top business schools across Europe.

Jane Barrett, the Career Farm’s founder is an experienced recruiter and co-
author of ‘Taking charge of your Career’, published by Bloomsbury. With over 15
years’ experience successfully coaching individuals, Jane works with current
students and alumni from many of the world’s leading business schools, helping
them to develop their career.

Jane is MBTI qualified and regularly features in national publications such as the
Financial Times and The Guardian.

www.thecareerfarm.com

Copyright © Jane Barrett 2017

Jane Barrett has asserted her right under Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author
of this work in respect of all content supplied by The Career Farm Limited. All rights relating to original content
contributed by the course participant remain with the course participant.

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