Objectives
Introduction
Continuing last week's theme, once you have determined your occupational type, you can begin to explore what types of careers might be best suited to you. The Holland Assessment provides detailed results regarding your occupational type, you could also receive detailed results through your career guidance or placement office or by taking the Self-Directed Search (SDS) online through sites such as SuccessHawk (http://www.successhawk.com).
The SDS will provide you with a profile of careers you might want to consider, but if you have not taken the SDS, your career guidance or placement office is the best place to start, as is the Department of Labor’s Occupation Exploration site at http://www.bls.gov/k12/index.htm.
The SDS and other career guidance tests are based on Holland’s work. Holland studied people who were successful and happy in many occupations and matched their occupations to their occupational type, creating a description of the types of occupations that are best suited to each personality type. Just as many individuals are more than one personality type, many jobs show a strong correlation to more than one occupational type.
| Occupational Type | Ideal Environments | Sample Occupations |
|---|---|---|
| Realistic |
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| Investigative |
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| Artistic |
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| Social |
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| Enterprising |
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| Conventional |
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Use the occupational code you received from the Holland Assessment last week to identify careers you might want to consider. Your career guidance or placement office should be a good resource for this activity, or you can check out Gottfredson and Holland’s Dictionary of Holland Occupational Codes in the reference section of your library.
Use the Department of Labor’s O*Net (http://online.onetcenter.org/find) to get a deeper understanding of your occupation. For each occupation, O*Net lists the type of work, the work environment, the skills and education required, and the job outlook for that occupation. This is a truly rich resource that you should get to know.
You may now have a list of careers you want to explore. But there are other factors you will need to take into consideration as well. It is important to use your creative thinking skills to come up with alternative “right” answers to factors that may present an obstacle to pursuing the right career.
It may seem odd to be thinking about life after school if you are just getting started. But you will soon be making decisions about your future, and regardless of the direction you may choose, there is a lot you can do while still in college. You will need to focus your studies by choosing a major. You should find opportunities to explore the careers that interest you. You can ensure that you are building the right kind of experience on which to base a successful career. These steps will make your dreams come to life and make them achievable.
Start by developing a relationship with the counselors in the career guidance or placement office. All too often students engage these counselors only near the end of their college days, when the pressure is just on getting a job—any job—after having completed a degree. But these counselors can be of great help in matching your interests to a career and in ensuring you are gathering the right kind of experience to put you at the top of the recruiting heap.
Keep in mind that deciding on and pursuing a career is an ongoing process. The more you learn about yourself and the career options that best suit you, the more you will need to fine-tune your career plan. Don’t be afraid to consider new ideas, but don’t make changes without careful consideration. Career planning is exciting: learning about yourself and about career opportunities, and considering the factors that can affect your decision, should be a core part of your thoughts while in college.
From Success in College, Chapter 12: Taking Control of Your Future: Career Exploration, licensed under a Creative Commons by-nc-sa 3.0 license
Trends
If you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.
Yogi Berra
This popular saying attributed to Yogi Berra suggests that we should have a pretty clear picture of where we are headed. And college, for most of us, is the last step toward a fulfilling and exciting career. But the fact is that the employment market and job-seeking techniques have changed significantly over the past ten years and will continue to change; it is not as easy as it once was to map out a clear career path. However, a clear direction can still provide enough flexibility to respond to the changing needs of today’s job market. In fact, building flexibility into your career plans is a requirement for achieving a successful career.
Consider the ways in which the job market has changed—and what it may mean to your planning:
These factors combine to create a job environment that is different from what most people might expect. The way you prepare for a career needs to be more flexible and more personalized. Technology will play an important role in your career development. Linking your demonstrable skills to the needs of a job will be a key to your success. This chapter will help set you up for this challenging environment.
From Success in College, Chapter 12: Taking Control of Your Future, licensed under a Creative Commons by-nc-sa 3.0 license
Read the article from Harvard Business Review (HBR) and think on the following:
Workshop
This week's workshop is My Strengths where we will discover personal strengths and understand how to leverage them in school.
When: Monday, June 26 at 1:00 pm
Where: Room 5101
Contact Kathy Mena for questions. See you there!
