22 Career Planning
“It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations if you live near one.” J.R.R. Tolkien
Career Planning
To plan a career, we need to consider the academic and occupational entry requirements for those fields. Deciding to explore a career is the beginning of the process, next we combine the knowledge we have obtained through our Career Exploration and begin planning the semester-by-semester and year-by-year process that we will need to go through to gain entry into our field of choice. Career planning is a process and determining long-term goals for your career can feel overwhelming. Once you have an action plan, it can accelerate your growth. Utilize the career assessment tools you completed to find out how you matched careers and how you can leverage your strengths. Leverage what you found out through your Career Exploration.
Begin researching, many times it’s easiest to work backward from your ultimate career goal. Spend time looking on job search websites (PipelineAz, Indeed, LinkedIn, etc). Familiarize yourself with the requirements for the career options that you are looking for. Understand the non-negotiable steps of your career options. For instance, if you want to be a medical doctor, you won’t get there without attending medical school. Understand the non-negotiable short-term and long-term goals for your chosen field, and reflect on how you feel about them.
Finally, it is always good to begin career planning by looking at job openings at the entry-level, once you have an idea of what role you want, you can start to plan how to get a foot in the door.
READ AND REFLECT ACTIVITY
Review the information found on the Career Planning & Exploration webpage
- Write down one thing you learned by visiting the page.
- Reflect on the following questions and write down your answers:
- What Careers or occupations do I want to know more about?
- Where am I in my career planning process?
- Create at least one action step for each of your responses above.
Example Reflection
I want to know more about careers in psychology and business
I am taking PSY101 and planning on pursuing an internship in one of these areas before graduating.
Action Steps
I will make an appointment with a Career Advisor by (give a specific date) to learn more about psychology and business.
I will schedule an informational interview with a professional in the job I am interested in by (specific date).
Informational Interviewing
Informational interviewing is one of the best ways to truly help acquire an insider’s perspective on what it is like to have a career in a specific area. This practice is a casual and informal conversation to learn more about an occupation, which you could not acquire simply by researching the career online. It is also a way to reinforce the steps one is taking toward the career and/or is an approach that assists in the discovery process that perhaps another avenue should be pursued. Interviewing a professional already working in the field you desire creates future networking opportunities, internship possibilities, job shadowing prospects, mentoring relationships, reference resources, and a connection to the career field unattainable by merely applying for a job.
MCC Faculty Spotlight Informational Interviews
There are 44 videos in total. You can open the entire playlist by clicking on the 1/44 icon in the top right corner of the video player.
Learn more about informational interviews from the University of California Berkeley Career Center.
REFLECTION ACTIVITY
After reviewing the MCC and UC Berkeley Career resources respond to the following prompts.
- Describe the 6 steps to informational interviewing.
- What are three questions you would use to learn more about a career?
- Name two MCC Faculty interviewed in the MCC Faculty Spotlight playlist you would choose to interview. Why did you choose them?
