Build Your Own Career Plan & Job Search Plan

Every tool on Skillset Centre is free. This guide shows you how to combine them yourself into two things: a career plan (the direction you’re actually suited to) and a job search plan (the concrete steps to get there). Neither requires an account — just a notes app or a blank document to collect your answers as you go.

Budget about 45–60 minutes if you do everything in one sitting, or spread it across a few days. Take the quizzes in the order below — later ones build on earlier results.

Part 1: Your Career Plan (closing gaps, mapping progression)

Your career plan answers two questions: what skills or weaknesses are actually holding me back, and what’s the realistic next step up from where I am now. Four quizzes feed into it.

Step 1 — Take the Employability Quiz

This is your primary gap-finder. Write down your readiness score and whatever it names as your biggest weakness — that becomes the first line on your gap list below.

Step 2 — Take the Ikigai Test

This gives you the longer-term target to progress toward, and its Ikigai Lift reading tells you something your employability score can’t: whether the path you’re on is one AI is likely to lift, or quietly erode. Worth knowing before you spend months closing gaps on a ladder that’s shrinking.

Step 3 — Take the Mindset Quiz

For each weakness you’ve named so far, this tells you which kind of problem you’re actually dealing with. A fixed-mindset result on a specific area means the real blocker is believing you can’t improve it, not the skill itself — and that needs a different fix than straightforward training.

Step 4 — Take the Personal Values Quiz and Work Culture Quiz

Before you spend effort climbing toward a specific next role, check it doesn’t contradict your values or preferred culture — closing every skill gap for a promotion you’ll resent is a wasted plan.

Step 5 — Answer four questions only you can answer

The quizzes can’t know these, so write down your own answers:

  • Current role and level: what you do now, and how long you’ve done it.
  • Next-step role: the specific job title one level up from where you are — not the dream job, the realistic next rung on the ladder.
  • What that role actually requires: list 3–5 skills or qualifications, pulled from real job ads for that title if you can find any — don’t guess.
  • Which of those you already have, and which you genuinely lack: be honest here. This list, combined with Step 1’s result, is your real gap list.

Put it together: your skills gap & progression plan

Write down: your current role, your named next-step role, and 2–4 specific skills or weaknesses standing between you and it (from your Employability result and Step 5’s honest list). For each one, note whether it’s a skill gap (something to train or practise) or a mindset gap (something you already believe you can’t do, per Step 3) — the two need different plans. Close with one line on whether your Ikigai Lift reading says this ladder is worth climbing, or whether it’s time to look at a different one.

Part 2: Your Job Search Plan (execution)

Your career plan tells you where you’re going. Your job search plan is how you actually get there, week by week.

Step 1 — Work through the Six Ducks framework

This is the backbone of the plan: a resume that survives an ATS, understanding workplace culture and bridge work, a verifiable AI micro-credential, a LinkedIn profile that makes you findable, a field-specific ePortfolio, and the positivity and community that keeps you going. Go through each duck and write one concrete action for it — “rewrite my resume into single-column format,” “complete one AI micro-credential this month,” and so on.

Step 2 — Take the AI Jobsearch Quiz

This checks how ready you are to use AI tools well in your actual search — prompting, resume tailoring, interview prep. Add whatever it flags as a gap to your action list from Step 1.

Step 3 — Set your weekly rhythm

Using your timeline from Part 1, decide:

  • How many hours a week you can realistically give this.
  • Your split between direct applications and networking — most roles are filled through people, not job ads, so don’t let applications crowd out the networking actions from Duck 4.
  • Which industries or companies you’re targeting first, based on your culture-fit and values results from Part 1.

Put it together: your 30/60/90-day job search plan

Lay out three short blocks:

  1. Days 1–30: close your biggest employability and Six Ducks gaps — resume, LinkedIn, the micro-credential.
  2. Days 31–60: start your weekly rhythm — applications and networking, targeted at the industries and culture fit from Part 1.
  3. Days 61–90: review what’s working (interview requests, response rates) and adjust — a plan that isn’t producing interviews by day 60 needs a real change, not just more volume.

Keep both plans somewhere you’ll actually look at them — a notes app, a document, even a printout. A career plan and job search plan only work if you revisit them, not just write them once.

Prefer not to do the combining yourself? The Plan Builder Tool asks the same questions and builds both plans for you on the spot — no account needed.