Freshman Year Career Plan

This is the first installment of a series of articles on a Career Development Plan for college students freshman through senior year.  Yesterday, I posted the introduction article about the series.  I would recommend reading it for some background.

These lists of tasks for your freshman year are in no particular order and of course are a suggestion of the items you should try and accomplish over the course of your first year in college related to career development.  Will you be able to do all of them?  Maybe not but at least try to do as many of them as possible; the more you do the more likely you will have a clear sense of direction about your career as your college career moves forward.

• Meet with you career service advisor at your campus career center.  These professionals are paid to help you find direction when it comes to your career.  They can be a wealth of resources most students over look.
• Take a career assessment test.  Your campus career service office will most likely have some type of career test available for you to take.  I highly recommend you take a look at their assessment tools to help you gage your interest and strengths.
• Schedule a meeting with your academic advisor after you have spent some time talking with career services.  Most students do it backwards; they pick a major and then visit career services.  How can you pick a major before you know what type of career you are interested in working toward?  Your major is a large factor in choosing your career.  Once you have met with career services you may need to meet with your academic advisor to change your major.
• Work with career services or professors to try and schedule tours of local companies.  Most companies are open to hosting tours of their facilities, especially for local schools.  If you are interested in engineering maybe you can tour the local manufacturing company or a technology company.  Tour the companies that fit within your interest.  Maybe you could even take an entire class to the company.
• Coordinate with family members or college staff to set-up one or two job shadowing experiences over the course of your freshman year.  A job shadow is a great way to get some insight into a company.  This is not an internship; you will not get paid.  This is simply an opportunity for you to spend a half a day or a full day with a company that is related to your field of interest.  The beauty of these types of experiences are multiple but the most important benefit is that you can get a very clear picture about it would be like to work in that company without actually working there.
• Write a resume.  I sound like a broken record but work with your career center to write your resume.  It may not be long but at least you have one. If it is short or sparse it might motivate you to fill it up with internships, job shadows, accomplishments, and jobs.
• If possible consider getting a summer internship after your freshman year.  Even if it is unpaid try and get some real experience within your field of study.  Work for a company that is willing to make your internship a learning experience.  The benefits of an internship are many but an internship might be the only way you could ever know if you actually want to be an accountant if you are studying accounting. It is also the only way to know if you don’t want to be an accountant.  Real life work experience matters more than textbooks.
• Create a list of companies in your local area that hire people like you.  If you are studying to be a JAVA programmer.  Work with your career center and professors to learn about as many of the companies in your area who hire JAVA programmers.  The more you know about an industry, a company, and a job, the more opportunities you will have when looking for your first job.  Knowledge truly is power when it comes to career development.

This is a list of suggested career development items you might want to consider for your freshman year.  There may be more but there may be less.  The focus of all these activities is ensuring you as a student spend as much time out of the classroom and in the real world as possible.  I love the classroom environment and love learning but I am a true believer in learning through experience.  It can be very eye opening when it comes to career development.

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s edition for the Sophomore Career Development Plan.

Over the years I have heard the frustrations from students about the lack of knowledge when it comes to choosing a job or career after college.  They know they should have some type of idea but from what I have gathered most do not.  Even though their parents are pushing them to get a job they have no idea what they are suppose to be doing.  More importantly they have no idea what they want to do.  It is one thing to have a job but it is another thing to have a job you love doing!

Therefore, I have put together a plan for college students that should give every student, who sticks to the plan, a guide to help them determine what future career they may want to explore.  At the crux of this plan are two words… experiential education.  Every student must get out of the classroom and into the real world, while they are in school in order to determine what they want to do with their life.  It is extremely difficult to ask someone what they want to do with their life if they have no idea what their options are.  Ignorance is never bliss when it comes to career development!

Here is a conversation that has taken place between parents and college seniors thousands of times.  Can you relate?

What are you going to do with your degree?... “I don’t know?”

Where have you applied for a job?… “Do they pay people for updating their MySpace page?”‘

Well, you better get a job because I have spent a lot of money paying for this college education that was suppose to land you a job!  “Does this mean I can’t live at home after I graduate?  I mean it will only be for six months or so.”

The term experiential education, as defined by Wikipedia is as follows:

Experiential Education is a philosophy in which educators purposefully engage with learners through a variety of experiential methodologies in direct experience and focused reflection in order to increase knowledge, develop skills and clarify values.

I would add that is a combination of activities like job shadowing, company tours, internships, co-ops, mock interviewing, etc…

There has never been a company that said, “We should really hire this person because they have no idea about business, our industry, our products, or our customers.”

What they actually say is, “We really need to hire this person because they understand our business, our industry, our products, and our customers.”

The only way to have a chance at being that person who understands their business, industry, products and customers is to have experience under your belt before you graduate!  As a student your primary focus is school but your college experience must have a variety of opportunities to interact with companies who can show you what life is going to be like after college.  Not only to show you what life is going to be like but also to allow you to explore the many different career opportunities that exist in our world.  We all have been given special talents, skills, and abilities.  The question is have you found out what yours are yet.  Once you do then and only then can you think about what job or career you can apply those talents in.  Experiential education is the only way you will be able to determine what you are good at or interested in, not in the classroom alone.

If you incorporate experiential education into your college experience you will have a much better chance of finding your passion rather than your job!

Over the next four days I will be making individual posts that outline a plan of action for every level of students; freshman through seniors.  Stay tuned.

Day One – Freshman Year

Day Two- Sophomore Year

Day Three – Junior Year

Day Four – Senior Year and beyond…