The PA role is a particularly exciting one, given that there are so many variants in it. One PA job is totally different from another, and to a large extent, the role is what you make of it. The office professional position is one of those careers where you really can develop a role to meet your interests, passions, and skills. "My Career" is an exciting, dynamic tool for you to use when you're plotting your next step.

So what are the benefits to you of My Career?
My Career has been designed to help you:

1. plan your career by considering where you want to be and how you're going to get there;



2. use your own tools on DeskDemon such as email and address book to your advantage;



3. access practical advice, tips and tricks to help you progress your career;



4. acquire information on what's happening in your region so that you can make informed career choices.

How should you use My Career?

Let's work through an example. Introducing Carole, a PA in Canterbury who uses My Career. First of all, Carole completes the interactive Where am I now? to assess her career so far, and to understand her current status. She can use exercises such as Let's do a skills audit to boost her self-knowledge, and display clearly where her strengths are and her areas for improvement.

Carole can then move on to do Where do I want to be? This tool is designed to help her paint a picture of the role she wants in future. Of course, deciding where you want to be is only half the battle. So she can then access the How do I get there? section, which will help her to work out exactly what she needs to do to make that role happen.

The Career Tools are planned to fulfil a logical sequence, putting you in control, with expert help for each stage of your career planning. At this point, Carole can now work through the Next Move section, and perhaps even the Make the most of her annual review. These tools will help her to decide whether she needs to start looking for a new role with another company, or whether she should maximise the opportunities her current position has to offer.

The Training pages give her access to advice to help persuade the boss to pay for her training, and if s/he won't, where to go for financial help. And if Carole decides to move employers, the Recruitment section will help.

Her own private Deskdemon email and address book means that she can keep in touch with agencies and send CVs out without having to worry about confidentiality. She can track networking events in her region held by companies having careers evenings, or agency get-togethers in her calendar.

And because most of us want to move to jobs near to where we live, it's a great boon to learn about all the sources of support and advice available locally. Know my region gives her access to a wide range of sources of help in her local area. This means she can get information on the sectors which are the strongest employers, for example, or find the contact details of local development agencies and business advice centres, or if she wants to set up on her own, then the own business section will get her started. To help Carole find people in her area who might know of that next perfect role outside her company, she can access the Networking section.

Having plotted her next step, Carole can return to My Career repeatedly, doing the exercises again and again.

What should your next step be?

Read through the Guidance Notes first, and then proceed with Where do I want to be? (remembering, of course, that you need to be a registered user of DeskDemon to use the interactive parts of the service). The practical advice and tips will help you achieve your career goals, while Know my region will be focusing on different parts of the UK in turn, to help you make up local contacts and boost the knowledge you have of the opportunities your region in the UK has to offer.

So what are you waiting for? Get planning, with My Career! It's your career and your life - make the most of them!