2.1: Exploring Career Options
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Introduction
Start the process of career planning, even if you’re not sure where to begin. The final format of your plan is up to you. You might include many details, such as the next job title you’d like to have, the courses required for your major, and other training that you want to complete. You might list companies to research and people that could hire you. You might also include target dates to complete each of these tasks.
One option is to represent your plan visually through flowcharts, time lines, mind maps, or drawings. You can generate these by hand or using computer software.
The goal is to begin the process of discovery. You can always change direction after some investigation.
- The career I choose for now is ...
- The major steps that will guide me to this career are ...
- The immediate steps I will take to pursue this career are ...
This lesson will guide you through ways to explore your career options, including choosing a career path, building a career network, and identifying your transferrable skills.
Exploring a Career Choice
You have many options for integrating work into the context of your life. You can work full-time. You can work part-time. You can commute to a cubicle in a major corporation. Or you can work at home and take the 30-second commute from your bedroom to your desk. Close your eyes. Visualize an ideal day in your life after graduation. Vividly imagine the following:
- Your work setting
- Your coworkers
- Your calendar and to-do list for that day
- Other sights and sounds in your work environment
This visualization emphasizes the importance of finding a match between your career and your lifestyle preferences—the amount of flexibility in your schedule, the number of people you see each day, the variety in your tasks, and the ways that you balance work with other activities.
Career-planning materials and counselors can help you test your choice and change it if you decide to do so. Read books about careers. Search for career-planning websites. Ask career counselors about skills assessments that can help you discover more about your skills and identify jobs that call for those skills. Take career planning courses and workshops sponsored by your school. Visit the career-planning and job placement offices on campus.
Once you have a career choice, translate it into workplace experience. Here are some examples:
- Contact people who are actually doing the job you’re researching, and ask them a lot of questions about what it’s like (an information interview ).
- Choose an internship or volunteer position in a field that interests you.
- Get a part-time or summer job in your career field.
If you find that you enjoy such experiences, you’ve probably made a wise career choice. And the people you meet are possible sources of recommendations, referrals, and employment in the future. If you did not enjoy your experiences, celebrate what you learned about yourself. Now, you’re free to refine your initial career choice or go in a new direction.
Career planning is not a once-and-for-all proposition. Rather, career plans are made to be changed and refined as you gain new information about yourself and the world. You might not walk straight into your dream job right after graduation. And you can approach any position in a way that takes you one step closer to your career goal. Do your best at every job, and stay flexible. Career planning never ends, and the process is the same whether you’re choosing your first career or your fifth.
Supporting Your Career Plan
Now that you’ve thought more about your career plan, you can make choices such as choosing a major and creating an academic plan.
Choosing a Major
One of the ways to help you choose a major is by completing the following steps:
Step 1: Discover options. Look at your school’s catalog or website for a list of majors. Make a photocopy of that list or print it out. Spend at least 5 minutes reading through all the majors that your school offers.
Step 2: Make a trial choice. Cross out all of the majors that you already know are not right for you. You will probably eliminate well over half the list. Scan the remaining majors. Next to the ones that definitely interest you, write “yes.” Next to majors that you’re willing to consider and are still unsure about, write “maybe.”
Now, focus on your “yes” choices. See whether you can narrow them down to three majors.
Finally, write an asterisk next to the major that interests you most right now. This is your trial choice of major .
Step 3: Evaluate your trial choice. Congratulations on making your choice! Now, take a few minutes to reflect on it. Does it align with your interests, skills, and career plans? Set a goal to test your choice of major with an out-of-classroom experience. Examples are internships, field experiences, study abroad programs, and work-study assignments. Note that these experiences might confirm your trial choice—or lead to a new choice of major.
Creating Your Academic Plan
An academic plan is a road map for getting the most out of your education. It is a document listing all of the courses you plan to take and when you plan to take each one. (At some schools, it is called a degree plan .)
Step 1 : You probably started an academic plan when you registered for school. If you have any notes or materials from that experience, then review them. Also review your school’s course catalog and website.
Step 2 : Using all of the information you’ve gathered so far, create your list of planned courses on a separate sheet of paper. Another option is to use your computer and create your list with word- processing, outlining, or spreadsheet software.
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Consider formatting your plan as a chart:
- In the first column, list the name of each course.
- In the second column, write the number of credits for each course.
- In the third column, note the term you plan to take each course (for example, Spring 2018 ). Be sure to check your college catalog for course prerequisites or corequisites.
Step 3 : Now, evaluate your academic plan. Make sure that it
- gives you the total number of credits you need to graduate.
- meets your school’s requirements for general education.
- meets the requirements for your major, your minor, or both.
Reach out to instructors and advisors for help. Use available resources to create an academic plan that fuels your success.
Building a Career Network
One key to making your career plan real and ensuring that you can act on it is naming . Include specific names whenever they’re called for. Here are some examples:
- Name your job. List the skills you enjoy using, and find out which jobs use them (you can begin by going to the O*NET OnLine website). What are those jobs’ titles? List them. Note that the same job might have different names.
- Name your company—the agency or organization you want to work for. If you want to be self-employed or start your own business, name the product or service you’d sell. Also, list some possible names for your business. If you plan to work for others, name the organizations or agencies that are high on your list.
- Name your contacts. Take the list of organizations you just compiled. Find out which people in these organizations are responsible for hiring. List those people, and contact them directly. If you choose self-employment, list the names of possible customers or clients. All of these people are job contacts.
- Name your location. Ask whether your career choices are consistent with your preferences about where to live and work. For example, someone who wants to make a living as a studio musician might consider living in a large city such as New York or Toronto. This contrasts with the freelance graphic artist who conducts his business mainly by phone, fax, and email. He might be able to live anywhere and still pursue his career.
Now, expand your list of contacts by brainstorming with your family and friends. Come up with a list of names-anyone who can help you with career planning and job hunting. write each of these names on a 3 x 5 card; you can also use a spiral-bound notebook computer, or smartphone.
Next, contact the people on your list to conduct an information interview to get to know people in your career field.
- Call the key people on your list. Ask them about their career experiences, tell them about the career path you’re considering, and probe their knowledge of the industry you’re interested in. After you speak with them, make brief notes about what you discussed. Also jot down any actions you agreed to take, such as a follow-up call.
- Send a short email to a person on your list. This is someone who’s doing the kind of work that you’d love to do. Invite that person to coffee or lunch. If that’s not feasible, then ask for a time to talk on the phone or to videoconference. Explain that you’d like to have a 20-minute conversation to learn more about what people in your career field do and about how they get hired. Again, you’re asking for an information interview rather than a job interview. Whenever possible, make this contact after getting an introduction from someone that both of you know.
Consider everyone you meet as a potential member of your job network. Be prepared to talk about what you do. Develop a pitch —a short statement of your career goal that you can easily share with your contacts. For example: “After I graduate, I plan to work in the travel business. I’m looking for an internship in a travel agency for next summer. Do you know of any agencies that take interns?”
Everyone has a network. The key is to discover it and develop it.
Defining Transferrable Skills
Few words are as widely misunderstood as skill . Defining this word carefully can have an immediate and positive impact on your career planning.
One dictionary defines skill as “the ability to do something well, usually gained by training or experience.” Some skills—such as the ability to repair fiber-optic cables or do brain surgery—are acquired through formal schooling, on-the-job training, or both. These abilities are called work- content skills . People with such skills have mastered a specialized body of knowledge needed to do a specific kind of work.
However, there is another category of skills that we develop through experiences both inside and outside the classroom. These are transferable skills . Transferable skills are abilities that help people thrive in any job—no matter what work-content skills they have. You start developing these skills even before you take your first job.
Perhaps you’ve heard someone described this way: “She’s really smart and knows what she’s doing, but she’s got lousy people skills.” People skills—such as listening and negotiating —are prime examples of transferable skills.
Transferable skills are often invisible to us. The problem begins when we assume that a given skill can be used in only one context, such as being in school or working at a particular job. Thinking in this way places an artificial limit on our possibilities.
Exploring Transferrable Skills
As an alternative, think about the things you routinely do to succeed in school. Analyze your activities to isolate specific skills. Then, brainstorm a list of jobs where you could use the same skills.
Consider the task of writing a research paper. This calls for the following skills:
- Planning , including setting goals for completing your outline, first draft, second draft, and final draft
- Managing time to meet your writing goals
- Interviewing people who know a lot about the topic of your paper
- Researching using the Internet and campus library to discover key facts and ideas to include in your paper
- Writing to present those facts and ideas in an original way
- Editing your drafts for clarity and correctness
Now, consider the kinds of jobs that draw on these skills.
For example, you could transfer your skill at writing papers to a possible career in journalism, technical writing, or advertising copywriting. You could use your editing skills to work in the field of publishing as a magazine or book editor.
When meeting with an academic advisor, you may be tempted to say, “I’ve just been taking general education and liberal arts courses. I don’t have any marketable skills.” Think again. Interviewing and researching skills could help you enter the field of market research. The abilities to plan, manage time, and meet deadlines will help you succeed in all of the jobs mentioned so far.
Use the same kind of analysis to think about transferring skills from one job to another. Say that you work part-time as an administrative assistant at a computer dealer that sells a variety of hardware and software. You take phone calls from potential customers, help current customers solve problems using their computers, and attend meetings where your coworkers plan ways to market new products. You are developing skills at selling , serving customers , and working on teams . These skills could help you land a job as a sales representative for a computer manufacturer or software developer.
The basic idea is to take a cue from the word transferable . Almost any skill you use to succeed in one situation can transfer to success in another situation.
The concept of transferable skills creates a powerful link between higher education and the work world. Skills are the core elements of any job. While taking any course, list the specific skills you are developing and how you can transfer them to the work world. Almost everything you do in school can be applied to your career—if you consistently pursue this line of thought.
You might want to do some additional research on the types of skills important as you develop your career path, and ask yourself:
- What skills are important in my specific career path?
- Which skills do I already possess?
- Which skills do I need to continue to develop?
Asking the Right Questions
To experiment further with this concept of transferable skills, ask and answer four questions.
Why identify my transferable skills? Getting past the “I-don’t-have-any-skills” syndrome means that you can approach job hunting with more confidence. As you uncover these hidden assets, your list of qualifications will grow as if by magic. You won’t be padding your résumé. You’ll simply be using action words to tell the full truth about what you can do.
Identifying your transferable skills takes a little time. But the payoffs are numerous. A complete and accurate list of transferable skills can help you land jobs that involve more responsibility, more variety, more freedom to structure your time, and more money. Careers can be made—or broken—by the skills that allow you to define your job, manage your workload, and get along with people.
Transferable skills help you thrive in the midst of constant change. Technology will continue to develop. Ongoing discoveries in many fields could render current knowledge obsolete. Jobs that exist today may disappear in a few years, only to be replaced by entirely new ones.
In the economy of the twenty-first century, you might not be able to count on job security. What you can count on is skills security —abilities that you can carry from one career to another or acquire as needed.
What are my transferable skills? Discover your transferable skills by reflecting on key experiences. Recall a time when you performed at the peak of your ability, overcame obstacles, won an award, gained a high grade, or met a significant goal. List the skills you used to create those successes.
For a more complete picture of your transferable skills, describe the object of your action. Say that one of the skills on your list is organizing. This could refer to organizing ideas, organizing people, or organizing objects in a room. Specify the kind of organizing that you like to do.
How
do I perform these skills?
You can bring your transferable skills into even sharper focus by adding adverbs—words that describe
how
you take action. You might say that you
edit
accurately
or learn
quickly
.
You can use a three-column chart to summarize your transferable skills; see the following for an example. Create a three-column chart. Label the first column Verb . Label the second column Object . Label the third column Adverb .
|
VERB |
OBJECT |
ADVERB |
|
Organizing |
Records |
Effectively |
|
Serving |
Customers |
Courteously |
|
Coordinating |
Special events |
Efficiently |
Add a specific example of each transferable skill to your skills list, and you’re well on the way to an engaging résumé and a winning job interview.
What if I could expand my transferable skills? In addition to thinking about the skills you already have, consider the skills you’d like to acquire. Describe them in detail. List experiences that can help you develop them. Let your list of transferable skills grow and develop as you do.
Identifying Your Transferrable Skills
Discovering your skills includes three steps. Before you begin, gather at least a hundred 3 × 5 cards and a pen or pencil. Or open up a computer file and use any software that allows you to create lists. Allow about 1 hour to complete the exercise.
These areas of knowledge indicate your work-content skills. For example, tutoring a French class requires a working knowledge of that language.
List all of your skills that fall into this category, labeling each one as work content .
Step 1: List recent activities. Recall your activities during the past week or month. Jot down as many of these activities as you can. (If you’re using 3 × 5 cards, list each item on a separate card.) Include work-related activities, school activities, and hobbies. Spend 10 minutes on this step.
Step 2: List rewards and recognitions. Next, list any rewards you’ve received, or other recognition of your achievements, during the past year. Examples include scholarship awards, athletic awards, or recognitions for volunteer work. Allow 10 minutes for this step as well.
Step 3: List work-content skills. Now, review the two lists you just created. Take another 10 minutes to list any specialized areas of knowledge needed to do those activities, win those awards, and receive those recognitions.
Step 4: List transferable skills. Go over your list of activities one more time. Spend 10 minutes looking for examples of transferable skills—those that can be applied to a variety of situations. For instance, giving a speech or working as a salesperson in a computer store requires the ability to persuade people. Tuning a car means that you can attend to details and troubleshoot. List all of your skills that fall into this category, labeling each one as transferable .
Step 5: Review and plan. You now have a detailed picture of your skills. Review all the lists you’ve created in the previous steps. See whether you can add any items that occur to you. Save your lists in a place where you can easily find them again. Plan to update all of them at least once each year. Your lists will come in handy for writing your résumé, preparing for job interviews, and doing other career-planning tasks.