Career Exploration

Career exploration is crucial for high school students. Proper career planning will encourage you to develop and work toward goals and improve your knowledge of career options. Career exploration is simply learning about various occupations and their "fit" with your unique career preferences, e.g. the skills, interests and values you want satisfied by your future career. When trying to choose a career, there are two things you must do. First you will need to conduct a self-assessment. Then you must research careers that match the results of your self assessment.

The Self-Assessment

A self-assessment is not a test, well it can be a test, but not in the sense of right or wrong or pass or fail. It is a way to learn about yourself by gathering information about:

• • • Work-Related Values: Your work values are the ideas and beliefs that will be important to you on the job. They may include things like prestige, high salary, helping others, and flexible work schedule.

    • Interests: Your likes and dislikes regarding various activities make up your interests. Examples of interests include: reading, running, golfing, knitting, and so forth.

    • Personality Type: Your personality type is made up of your social traits, motivational drives, needs, and attitudes. Particular personality types are better suited to certain careers and work environments, than are others.

    • Aptitude: Aptitude refers to your natural talent, learned ability, or capacity to acquire a skill. You may have a high aptitude in math, science, visual art, music, verbal or written communication, reading comprehension, logic and reasoning, manual dexterity, or mechanics. Any of these skills could lead to a future career.

Researching Occupations

The results of your self assessment will give you some career options. It will not match perfectly with a career but it will point you in the right direction of careers or general industries that will match your values, interest, personality, and aptitude. This will yield several options. It is recommended you spend sometime researching the careers in the following ways:

• • • Connect with people in the field: Within your local community their are plenty of businesses and organizations that have professionals doing what you want to do. Some of them are more than willing to talk to young aspiring students.

    • Conduct book/online research: There are plenty of books, journals, blogs, and internet sites that provide information on career sectors. Read professional publications.

    • Attend a career fair, workshop, or summer program: You will have an opportunity to learn, study, and ask questions to a large number of working professionals.

    • Meet with your Career Advisor: The Career Center has useful resources available to you.

    • Intern or Volunteer in the field: Nothing lets you know if you are cut out for a particular career than spending time working in it.