Career Exploration
One student's journey through the process of discovering a career.
For anyone who is interested, here is a link to my Final Project for EDUC 131, the Career Exploration class for which I am writing this blog. It basically follows my Pinterest boards for the account and how they have grown and changed over the semester as I learned new things about career exploration. There is no audio, so it might not make a lot of sense, but I basically showed some pins that exemplify my thought process for each board at certain points throughout the semester, progressing from left to right. Just click the photo below to get started! Yours, Tricia Bacon
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After spending a few weeks exploring international trade compliance as a career, I am traveling back to the Focus 2 assessments to reflect a little bit more on one of the sections I have not mentioned yet: the values assessment. The values I have listed from this assessment are creativity, helping others, and tangible results. Both creativity and helping others are values reflected in my work interest assessment, as I would like a job that will make me think and force me to challenge myself while allowing me to make a difference in someone else’s life. As for the tangible results, I get frustrated and stressed when I cannot see that progress is being made, making me less productive and willing to get things done, so seeing these results would be important to the health of my career. Of these three values, helping others is the most important to me since that is what I believe contributes to one’s purpose in life. While I would like to see these results in action and know that what I am doing is making a difference, tangible results is probably the least important value to me because I will get the job done, regardless of whether or not I can see the outcome of it.
Another aspect of Focus 2 I have not discussed much is its ability to compare the results from all five assessments and see what the common careers are between them all. This process produced a strange assortment of results for me; I have no matches between all five assessments or even four of them, but I have plenty between just two or three. The jobs that appear when matching my values with something else are usually jobs involving engineering of some kind, which makes sense since those jobs both involve a great deal of creativity and produce tangible results. Some other results that showed up were some of the more artistic jobs that I have looked at before, but mostly as dream jobs that I will not likely pursue, like animators and video game designers. However, none of these jobs really seem to take into account the value I find most important. While a few psychology careers popped up, most of my results ignored my interest in helping others, which makes it hard for me to look into any of them very seriously. All of these assessments are important factors in my career exploration process, but it is nearly impossible for me to satisfy all of those results. After all, the largest number of assessments that matched up in a career search was three out of five. Of those five assessments, I believe that personality is probably the most important when deciding a career. I will not click well in a work environment with which my personality clashes, nor will I enjoy that job very much. While values are crucial to me when determining a job, the way Focus 2 lays them out makes them less important to me; you literally just pick your top three values from a short list rather than taking a quiz that will provide you with more accurate/less biased results than those you decide yourself. Also, I believe that my personality reflects my values, which makes the values category kind of useless to me. In fact, I can see my personality in all of my assessments, or at least a common thread between them all. So while all of these facets of Focus 2 are important to my career exploration, the ability of me as a person to be compatible with my work environment seems to trump them all. Now that I’ve talked about trade compliance for a few weeks, I need to look into the work environment a little bit more. One of the biggest issues in creating a positive work environment is cultural competency, or recognizing the diversity within the workplace and making sure everyone is included in the work environment. This can mean keeping racism and sexism out of the office, making sure those with a disability are still able to work, or even recognizing mental illness within the workplace and how to help those suffering from it. If you follow me on Pinterest (https://www.pinterest.com/triciacbacon/), you can see that most of my pins on my cultural competency board focus on international etiquette. While I do pin about various other forms of diversity, global cultural differences is what I think about when I hear the words “cultural competency,” and it is the most relevant to the fields I have been looking into so far. Other cultures have fascinated me for as long as I can remember. When I was younger and my dad would go abroad on business trips, he would occasionally bring souvenirs back from China, Germany, Turkey, and many other places he visited. As I grew older, I started taking Spanish classes and learning about Latin American cultures and I became friends with people from many different countries and backgrounds, whether they were American citizens or foreign exchange students. Seeing that there are people who do things differently from America piques my interest, and it is the reason why I started looking at trade compliance in the first place. In the literal definition of the word, becoming more knowledgeable about other cultures has become very important to me, both as an interest and from an ethical standpoint. When it comes to the job itself, cultural competency is obviously very important in international trade compliance – after all, international is in the name! The work environment is saturated with influences from other cultures, and people from a variety of countries come in contact with each other all the time to trade. Intolerance for the everyday experiences, languages, and customs of these other countries would lead to a loss in business and probably a loss in your job as well. Cultural competence would also create a more positive work environment, as constantly belittling others in the office with incorrect or bigoted views of other cultures will not keep office morale very high. But this does not mean that becoming more aware of different customs is a chore that must be done for the job’s sake; it can be a fascinating learning experience (at least in my opinion), and listening to others speak of their experiences and lifestyles can help build relationships with fellow employees, expanding professional networks. As the celebration of diversity is becoming more and more prevalent in our society, keeping up with this trend is basically mandatory. Whether or not you choose to see it as just that or as an exciting chance to meet new people and learn new things is up to you. Resumes can be a very simple or very difficult part of the job search process. All you have to do is clearly and concisely describe your abilities and experiences to potential employers. However, with each resume you submit, you must tailor those skills so they are relevant to the company to which you are applying. As someone who does not have a clear plan for my future quite yet, finding enough specific, relevant skills for any specific job is not really possible, so I must make what skills I do possess relevant. For some jobs, this is easy; for others, not so much. Keeping with the theme of last week’s post, I decided to tailor my resume to a business internship at AbbVie Inc., a biopharmaceutical company that markets their treatments around the world to help as many people as possible. This job tied in with my work interest as a helper and my interest in trade compliance, so it seemed like a great place to start, but the tailoring process was not as simple as it seemed.
As far as relevant experience goes, I have volunteered multiple times, shadowed at a pediatric clinic, and took a job as a nanny in the past. All of these experiences can be tailored for communication and possibly leadership skills. While homeowners, patients, and families I have worked for are the obvious beneficiaries of my contributions, I have also gained valuable experiences, such as improving those skills and forming new relationships with a variety of people. However, these experiences would be better on my resume if I were applying for a position in which I worked with children. That kind of career is what I was thinking I might want to do at first, but since I am now leaning away from that possibility, these experiences are not quite as relevant as they once were. And since I am just now discovering new ideas of what I may want to do in the future and have no definite career plans yet, it is difficult to find or start obtaining new experiences specific to a certain career. My top skills are probably problem solving and analyzing situations, and while they are listed as key skills in the job description, positions like the one I “applied” for tend to emphasize communication skills more than anything else. I have developed my communication skills over the past few years, but they can always use improving. On the flip side, I do not have as much experience with leadership positions because I am very introverted, and leading is not within my comfort zone. Since most companies are interested in those kinds of skills above all others, though, I have been trying to work on those skills more. The other skills listed on the resume are oral and written skills, and while these are not my favorite things to work on, I have built them up for certain classes and can use them fairly well. Through the process of writing a resume, I have learned that while I do have some of the skills required by employers, I need to hone in on much more specific ones for a specific job I am looking for. While I may not know what that job is now, there are universally desired skills like leadership that I can be working on until I find the job match that is right for me. Over the past several weeks, I have been looking into the Focus 2 assessments and exploring careers and job families related to my results. This week, I decided to learn more about one of those careers by interviewing an expert in one of those job families. I know that in my last entry I said that of the most common families in my results, I was interested in legal careers the least since they tend to be very social. However, the fact that it showed up did grab my attention. My dad is a patent attorney, so I have learned some things about having a legal career (most of which have dissuaded me from pursuing one), but seeing that family pop up on my results has made me think that I might want to look into it again.
One of the people who works next to office is Victor Reinhold, the director of international trade compliance in his company. Basically, he deals with import and export laws, trying to make sure all goods shipped between countries meet the regulations of both parties involved. This can be a tricky process; just because a good can be exported according to one country’s policies does not mean the other country can legally import it. My dad has been trying to get me to meet with Mr. Reinhold about this career for a long time, since I have always been interested in travel. I figured that since I have shown some aptitude for a legal career, this would be a great opportunity for me to learn more about one. First things first, I asked a few basic questions: what major do employers typically look for? What skills do I need for this job? How much more schooling would I need? The answers to these questions were surprisingly not very clear cut. Like many other companies I heard from at the Career Expo, undergraduate major is not the most important thing considered when hiring. Business and International Studies majors are the most common, but Mr. Reinhold actually has a Bachelor’s degree in History. Master’s degrees in the aforementioned subjects are more important to employers; however, they once again are not necessarily required. His assistant only had a Bachelor’s degree, and she might take over his position when he retires (if she is still there). The reason for this, though, is that she has very good written and verbal communication skills, which are important to the position. Some of the most important skills for a career in trade compliance are public speaking, writing, problem solving, and memorization. This seemed to confirm my fears about aegal career – I get very nervous when I have to speak in front of audiences, and I am not a fan of constantly writing papers. However, Mr. Reinhold assured me that the speaking really was not so bad. Most of the time, you would be speaking to a very small group of people (around 10-20), and usually you already knew those people from being in contact with them online over the course of several years. The biggest point he emphasized, though, is that you must be the expert in your company; no one else should know more about these agreements than you, or your job is pointless. The rewards from this job can be pretty great. According to Mr. Reinhold, you can get a decent amount of time for exploring and traveling if your boss is nice enough. He has been on boat rides down the Amazon, seen the Great Wall of China, and explored mountains in Italy – all during business trips. I have to admit, that part is definitely up my alley. This interview helped me to get a better idea of what this job is all about. While I may not like parts of it, it is definitely not as bad as my original thoughts on legal careers would have led me to believe, and it does seem like something worth pursuing. The Focus 2 assessments really are useful tools for determining where I should focus my attention in my job search. In the last post, I briefly described my results and determined what was accurate to my perception of myself and what was eye-opening to me. Now, I am able to delve even deeper into these results and find out what Job Families (or groups of similar jobs) I might be interested in researching more. My first step is to determine how each of my work interest areas are seen in my everyday life. As I have already mentioned, my creativity lies for the most part in my hobbies; I love playing the violin, singing, and daydreaming. My ability to help others is especially seen in my volunteer work. From middle school to about halfway through high school, I would help my church out with children’s camps, and I often helped tutor my peers in high school. I also have a lot of experience with Appalachian Service Project, an organization devoted to rebuilding homes in the Appalachian Mountains. Last but not least, my aptitude for thinking and investigating can be seen in my scholarly interests and talents, such as all of the calculus, chemistry, and biology classes I have taken.
While all of this is important to take note of, the more important question here is what impact these experiences have made on my life. Well, my creative interests have taught me to think outside of the box. I am now able to pay attention to the overall musicality of a piece rather than just hearing it note-by-note, and I am able to pursue the “what ifs” I dream up on my own time. My interests as a thinker have caused me to have a systematic way of thinking and to constantly ask questions: how does x affect y, what steps do I need to take to understand this, what effect can I have on this relationship, etc. And while volunteer work obviously impacts others, as they get a better understanding of course material or a warmer, safer, and drier home out of my service to them, it also impacts me, as I learn how to work with others and accomodate their needs in the process. These impacts are not just noticeable to me; Focus 2 was also able to determine them in my personality assessment. Most of the comments it gave me were very similar to the ones I have just listed. It says I am innovative and love discovering new ways to learn things, both of which correspond to my creativity. It also states that I am intuitive or perceptive, a quality needed to help others. By far the results point towards my investigative nature, with my independence, systematic order, and goal-oriented behavior being defining characteristics. Since Focus 2 was pretty spot-on with my personality assessment, the Job Families that occurred most frequently were for the most part ones I would have expected: Life, Physical, & Social Sciences, Architecture & Engineering, Computer & Mathematical, and Legal. All of these require an investigative nature of some kind and can be traced back to the very scientific course load that I have taken throughout high school and college. I am not so much interested in Legal careers, as those may put me in a more social spotlight than I would like. None of the fields relate exactly to my experiences with creativity and helping, but at least Architecture & Engineering and Computer & Mathematical jobs require some degree of creativity, and all of them can help others out in the long run. While there are still tons of Job Families out there that I may enjoy, these are a pretty good start for determining where I want my career to go. Now that the Career Expo is out of the way, I can write more about different kinds of career exploration, like assessments. At the beginning of the semester, I was asked to decide whether I fit into any of these six categories: helper, thinker, organizer, creator, doer, and persuader. I assessed myself as fitting into the former three. Last week, I took the Focus 2 assessments, a series of five questionnaires that use a ranking system to determine what my personality is like and what my career interests might be. The Work Interest Assessment results are put into a three letter code, called the Holland Code, which determines what three characteristics fit the test taker best. My Holland Code was ASI, which stands for artistic, social, and investigative. In terms of my initial assessment, this corresponds to the creators, helpers, and thinkers. These three categories were not unique to my Work Interest Assessment; in fact, they showed up at the top of my results across all of the assessments, although not always in the same order. While I do not usually label myself as artistic, I can understand why it is there. I have played the violin for nine years, I love to sing (although not usually very well), I am constantly daydreaming, and I used to love drawing and painting in middle school and early high school. However, the reason I did not classify myself as creative is because I have a hard time actually coming up with ideas. If someone throws an idea out there, I can elaborate, expand, or create upon that, but it is difficult for me to come up with that original idea. So while I can be creative, it is usually only after I have found an origin from someone else. I also feel mixed on the social aspect of the code. In my own self-assessment, I did put down that I would be a helper, as I want to do something in life that actually means something and will benefit other people. However, I am very introverted and have a hard time facilitating conversations, so I would not expect to be labeled as “social.” I definitely agree with the investigative aspect of the code, though. As I have mentioned before, I am very math/science minded; I love problem-solving, and I feel great when I can find the answer to a challenging puzzle. What surprised me was how low down in the rankings that was, as I am often told that is my strongest trait. I was also shocked to find that the organizer label that I believed myself to be in my self-assessment was ranked fifth out of six. While it obviously clashes with the artistic component, I am very systematic and tend to follow a strict routine, so it was odd to see that so low. The careers associated with my Holland Code were quite honestly disappointing to me. Many dealt with radio and TV announcing, hosting, and analyzing, all of which seem to come from the social part of my code rather than the other aspects that made more sense to me. The only one I might be interested in is a foreign language interpreter, since I love to travel and learn about other cultures. Even then, though, I am not fluent in any other languages, and I would most likely need to learn many. Some of the other assessments listed jobs I may enjoy, but I had no matches across all five or even four of the five assessments. My results seemed to clash too much with each other to provide any good careers that involve all of them. I want to help others, but I am not very social. I like systematic, organized problem-solving, but I need some room to be creative and have fun. This conflict of interests may be what is making it so difficult for me to decide on a career. More than anything else, this assessment has forced me to see that I may not find something that balances all aspects of my personality; I may just have to decide which ones are the most important to me and stick with those. After two weeks of preparation and research, the Career Expo finally happened last Thursday. For as much preparation as I had done, I was surprised to find that it really was not as high stakes as I had thought it would be, although this might have been a much different story if I had actually been looking for a job. Nonetheless, I still learned a lot from both the companies I talked to and the process itself.
As I expected, The Hershey Company was only offering jobs in retail and management. Since I know that is not my thing, I did not stay to talk to the recruiter for very long, but I did sign up for emails regarding internship opportunities in case something interesting shows up. Royal Caribbean Cruise Ltd. was very similar in that regard, as most of the positions they were looking to fill were retail and marketing. However, the recruiter did say that there were medical positions and internships available that I may be interested in if I choose to pursue physical therapy. Perhaps the most interesting employer I talked to was the Peace Corps. The recruiter at that station was the most amiable and enthusiastic recruiter I spoke to, and since I have a lot of experience volunteering, I felt much more comfortable speaking to him than to recruiters in areas with which I was less familiar. Some of their more popular opportunities involve teaching, environmental awareness, and medical assistance, none of which are exactly my thing but might be fun to try. Plus, it is only a 1-3 year commitment, so while this may not be a full-time job for me, it might provide me with a good gap year between undergraduate and graduate studies should I choose to endure more education. The New England Center for Children was also pretty interesting. Once again, most of their jobs involve teaching, which is not my forte, but the research aspect of the center seemed very intriguing. They observe the children’s behavior and determine what they believe to be the cause in problematic behavior and provide solutions to fix it. This seemed like something I might enjoy doing; however, they do not offer internships to anyone who is not an education or psychology major until after graduation, so I would not be able to work with them for a long time. Unfortunately, I did not get the chance to look at Residential Services, Inc. because every time I passed by that stand, the recruiter was busy speaking to someone else. Many of the recruiters I spoke to were happy to speak to a small group all at once, but this one seemed to be more interested in one-on-one conversations. Instead, I spoke to SAS, a software company that works with statistical data. I am a little interested in creating software and how that works, but I have no experience in it, so I was attempting to avoid large technology companies for that reason. However, this company also has career opportunities involving data collection and statistical analysis, which would be good jobs for a person like me who has a math/science mindset. On the subject of Career Expos in general, I learned it is good to have a resume prepared, even though I was not looking for a job. Almost every recruiter I talked to asked for a resume, which made me feel quite unprepared and disorganized. I also learned that formal elevator pitches aren’t always as important as I made them out to be. I was able to join several group conversations without a formal speech and still get my talents out there and my questions answered. Now that I have had some practice, I am sure I will have a much better experience in a couple of years when I am trying to get a job for real. At Career Expos, representatives of many companies show up to try to recruit new potential employees, and the variety and number can be overwhelming. For example, at UNC’s Job and Internship Expo, there are 148 companies registered. In order to determine which employers are the ones I would be most interested in talking to, some research is needed beforehand. After looking at the roster and what each employer does, I was able to narrow my choices down enough to research and pick the top 5 employers I plan to target:
Out of this whole process, I hope to find out what majors and skills are the most valuable to most employers. I have chosen a pretty diverse array of companies, so I should get a variety of answers. While all of them are important, the skills I need to focus the most on are the ones that are consistent with all of the companies I talk to – these will be skills that nearly all employers will be looking for, so I will need them whether or not I decide to stick with any of these jobs or employers. Most of all, though, I would like to get a better sense of what jobs are out there. Sometimes I wonder if the reason I cannot decide on a major or career path is because I haven’t heard about it or focused on it yet. Hopefully, with all of these options visible at the Career Expo, I can find an idea of what I may want to pursue. The Fall Job and Internship Expo at UNC is coming up pretty quickly. This event is a great opportunity to both get exposure to different jobs or specific positions in those jobs and to ask representatives of real companies what they are looking for in potential employees to see if you measure up to their standards. One of the biggest challenges at a huge event like this is making a good first impression with an elevator pitch. In the span of about 30 seconds, I will have to introduce myself, name some of my strong points and ask the recruiter about what their company looks for – without sounding rehearsed. I am a very introverted person, so going up to random strangers and engaging in natural conversation is way out of my comfort zone. I am a little afraid that without a rehearsed speech, I will walk up to a recruiter and then completely forget what I am supposed to say or do. I also have a difficult time coming up with questions on the spot; they usually come after I have fully processed what has been said about 20 minutes to an hour after the event has ended. Appearing cool and confident will be yet another challenge for me, as I have many nervous tendencies like biting my nails or playing with jewelry that involuntarily occur when I am conversing with a stranger. However, this isn’t the real deal; I am just asking questions for a class, not actually getting interviewed. Facing these challenges now is great practice at low stakes for when all of these things really matter in a few years.
As far as questions go, there are 3 things I know for certain I need to ask: 1.“What majors does your company typically hire?” – As someone who still hasn’t settled on a major, this is crucial information. If I am really interested in the work a company does, this could help me decide one so I can potentially have an advantage getting a job when I graduate. 2.“What are the most important skills or traits you look for in potential employees?” – Knowing what a company is looking for in an employee is very helpful early on in the game. I may not have a specific trait a company wants at this time, such as being personable, but if I start working on it now, I can improve that ability by the time senior year rolls around and I am actually looking for a job. 3.“Why did you choose this company?” – Asking recruiter why they chose the company allows them to talk and let their opinions be known, making the conversation center around them and not me and allowing me to hear the best parts of the company from a current employee. Bonus Question: “Are internships available?” or “What kinds of internships are available?” – Sophomore and junior years are about when to start looking for summer internships and getting experience, and this is a great opportunity to do so, especially if I see a company I like. Of course, I will have to research the specific companies I am interested in before asking any of these questions to see if they have already been answered online. Asking questions that have easily accessible answers on the company’s webpage will make it sound like I don’t actually care about the company, which is not an impression I want to give. |
AuthorHello! I'm Tricia Bacon, a sophomore at UNC Chapel Hill and a current explorer of potential careers. Archives
November 2016
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