Vision, Action, Reflection: Build your Personalized Plan for Career Success
How will a PDP help me?
The Professional Development Plan (PDP), part of the Grad Essentials online course, is a professional development program designed to provide direction, support, and tools to help you:
- Set flexible career goals that align with your values, skills, and interests, while being made aware of job-market options and realities
- Identify strengths and gaps in your skills, leverage resources, and make plans to build additional learning experiences into your graduate education to move you closer to your goals
- Complete your degree and successfully transition from your education program into the next stage of your career, ready to tell compelling stories about your graduate experience and the skills you have learned
While your graduate experience will offer many opportunities for growth and learning, working on your PDP is an opportunity to further customize your experience and ensure you develop the skills you want as a professional. Through professional development planning, you will articulate career goals, develop plans to achieve them, and track your successes along the way.
This tool is for all graduate students, supervisors and departments to use if they wish. The e-modules can be accessed through the Grad Essentials OnQ resource.
You can learn about self-enrollment in Grad Essentials here.
When you start your PDP is up to you – you can access and work through the modules at your own pace, although we recommend do the Launch module towards the start of your academic year/program, and the Wrap module towards the end. Each year we will offer both introductory and wrap-up workshops for the chance to engage with others doing their PDP and get extra guidance from the workshop facilitator.
- Log in to Grad Essentials on OnQ to access the Launching Your PDP module.
- Consider signing up for the PDP workshop and benefit from the facilitators’ and other participants’ experience.
- Complete the Launch module and finalize your learning goals.
- Check the SGSPA website regularly for learning opportunities.
- Track your learning and check in with your supervisor or support group along the way.
- At the end of your program or year, complete the PDP Wrap module. You can attend the PDP wrap-up workshop to help with this, and hear from other participants.
“My biggest lesson was to not wait on others, but to take the initiative. I did find that I was waiting for opportunities or on other people to solve my questions. However, I realized that what I make out of my experience is really based on what I decide to do and not what other people tell me to do. My own initiative really triggered my learning experience.”
How much time you put into your PDP is entirely up to you.
As a guide, think about it like this:
- Core expectations – Go through the workbook, plan your PDP, and reflect on what you have done.
- Attending the launch and wrap-up workshops; discussing your PDP with your supervisor is not essential but highly recommended.
- Additionally, consider how much time you want to spend on workshops, activities, and group work.
The PDP does not have to be completed in one term; you have your whole degree to complete it. Remember it is a guide. You can start and stop as many times as you like. The PDP framework will help guide you and keep track of your goals.
The following guidebook is intended for supervisors to help guide and support their students in the PDP process.
The Supervisors Guidebook to the PDP (234 KB)
Archived IDP Workbook (754 KB) – for those who participated in the previous program when it was called IDP. This has been since updated into the PDP modules for current participants.
Professional Development Plan (formerly IDP) is a collaboration with our partners from Career Services, Student Academic Success Services, the Centre for Teaching & Learning and the Faculty of Arts & Science.