Two very useful career-planning techniques are the SWOT analysis and the PEST analysis. These tools comes in very handy, when it comes to problem solving and decision-making in your career.

One kind of such context analysis, called SWOT analysis, allows the business to gain an insight into their strengths and weaknesses and also the opportunities and threats posed by the market within which they operate. The main goal of a context analysis, SWOT or otherwise, is to analyze the environment in order to develop a strategic plan of action for the business.

As SWOT Analysis is an essential tool in Strategic Planning, it takes into consideration of the four SWOT factors - Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. These are the four basic parts to this analysis in internal and external environments. It examines strengths and weaknesses in the internal environment, and opportunities and threats in the external environment. This management tool allows one to set a course in career planning. SWOT is a decision-making aid that provides a framework for formulating and developing strategies.

On the other hand PEST is a short form for "Political, Economic, Social, and Technological". PEST Analysis describes a framework of macro-environmental factors used in the environmental scanning component of strategic management. PEST Analysis is used to derive Opportunities and Threats and fit them into the SWOT Analysis template. As the list of Opportunities and Threats derived by PEST is quite systematic, it may end up quite many of them, therefore a proper selection tools is needed to select them.

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