Something magical happened for me this fall, I was able to combine two of my biggest passions: teaching and career development! I just finished teaching a nine-week Career Planning course to community college students. There were 50 students ranging in age from 16 to 46 on a nine-week whirlwind mission to gain clarity and plan for their future careers…and it was AWESOME.
I enjoy getting to know my students and learning from our interactions. As I reviewed their final reflection papers and the comments they left on the course evaluations, I realized they left me with three key reminders that I believe are helpful for every career educator, parent, and mentor!
1. Students crave opportunities to develop stronger self-awareness.
They may not know it or even realize they need it, but students really enjoy learning about themselves. The first four weeks of my nine-week course were devoted entirely to self-awareness as it relates to career decision making. Not one student grumbled. The opposite happened; students appreciated it! There were many comments in the course evaluation about how much the students enjoyed learning about themselves, “It helped me get to know myself better,” “The assignments have opened my eyes to who I am and how it relates to what I want to do with the rest of my life.”
Our society often faults our younger generations for lacking self-awareness; however, maybe we are doing a poor job of facilitating opportunities for them to build it. I challenge you to build-in opportunities for increased self-awareness when working with young people or those in transition. They need this perspective to make informed career decisions and will draw upon this knowledge in job interviews and networking situations.
Here are a few of my favorite free tools to help students build self-awareness as it relates to a career:
- ONET’s My Next Move Personality and Interests Profiler
- 123 Test’s Work Values Assessment
- The ONE Thing Guide to Uncovering Your Purpose
While these self-awareness tools are great, we cannot stop there. After a student has utilized a tool, the follow-up conversation with thought-provoking questions must occur as this is what creates the largest impact on the student. This leads me to my next point.
2. We need to challenge students’ career ambitions intentionally.
During the first week of class, I asked each student to introduce themselves and share their intended career path. Much to my surprise, only three students said “undecided.” My first thought was, “Wow, I’m impressed!” By the end of week two, it was clear that although these students had declared a major and/or career path, many had difficulty articulating why that particular career was a good fit. Their inability to explain why they were pursuing their career field reinforced the idea that we must challenge students’ career plans. Even the students who did not change their intended careers at the end course still appreciated the clarity they gained and their new ability to articulate why the occupation was a good fit for them.
Ask students tough questions. Make students think about what their lives will look like and how that aligns with their values and strengths. Here are a few of my favorite “tough” questions that make students think about why they are pursuing a particular career path:
- What is it about this career path that is really important to you? (Follow the question above with, “What else?” to get them thinking!)
- When was it that you knew you wanted to be an [insert vocation]? Don’t let them get by with a generic answer such as, “I’ve always known.”
- When are you at your best? Describe the situation and how you feel.
After a student has made a career decision, has really thought it through, and can articulate why they are passionate about that path and why it is a good fit for him/her, the next step is a career development action plan.
3. Students need help developing and separating academic and career goals.
Students seem to mush academic planning and career planning together. They think that by going to school and getting a degree or certificate, they are planning for their careers. And, I admit, they are to a certain extent; however, it isn’t good enough. Let me explain.
One of the final assignments of the course was for students to develop an action plan for obtaining their career goal and continuing to grow professionally. [Side note, if you aren’t familiar with Gary Keller’s book The ONE Thing, it is my favorite resource for goal setting. I use it with all of my students and career coaching clients.] I asked students to put their career goal at the top of the page and then list one thing they could do in the next three years to move them closer to that goal. Then, one thing they could do in the next year to move them closer to their three-year career goal, then one thing they could do in the next six months to move them closer to the one-year career goal, so forth and so on all the way down to what they can do right now.
So, what happened? Well, most students made their three-year goal to get a degree and then the rest of the goals from there down had to do with academics. Was it a total fail? No, at least they were planning for something and setting good, measurable goals! However, it was not the outcome for which I had hoped. I wanted students to think about career exploration opportunities, internships, networking, job fairs, resumes, etc.! The examples I provided had modeled that; however, they still seemed to fuse the two seamlessly. The lesson I was reminded of here is that I must be intentional about clearly communicating the VALUE of career exploration opportunities as they relate to career planning. Academic goals are important, but students also need to be setting goals that pertain specifically to gaining perspective and experience in their desired career field. These career planning activities provide perspective that can’t be gained in a traditional classroom or from a textbook.
As a final note, challenge the young people in your life. Ask the tough questions, push them out of their comfort zone, and help them succeed professionally!
For additional tips on career development, connect with me on LinkedIn at
