Category: CareerExploration

Olympics and Career Exploration

While watching the Olympics, my sister asked me: “Do you sometimes wonder if maybe there’s another sport you’d play well if you knew about it?  Like trampoline? or judo?”  Or we might like biathlons if we had grown up where there are snow and guns. It could turn out then that she had good hand-eye coordination all along.

I think that people pursue careers in much the same way. We generally go into careers we have heard about and know someone in, and we choose a career that we have a little experience in to know that we’d be good at it. So, for those of you who are trying to figure out what your calling is, don’t just sit back and debate the options. Go out and experience new things, take a class in something you know nothing about, talk to people in different jobs, volunteer or do an internship, and fact check. My point isn’t to find some obscure career that you have to move far away to do, but that there are a lot of careers out there that you might like a lot and be very good at, so why limit yourself to the careers you’ve heard about but not so sure you want?

Keep It Moving: Maintaining Momentum in Your Career

By Sharon Fleshman

Whether you want to get a running start at your new job, invigorate your current career, or make a complete shift, being proactive is always a wise move.  Consider the following strategies and commit to moving forward with at least one action step by the end of the summer.

Conduct Self-Assessment: What do you want and what can you offer?

  • Reflect on past experiences and accomplishments and consider where you were energized and made impact.
  • Assess your skills, interests, personality traits and values using informal worksheets or career inventories.
  • Read about careers and job announcements and see what resonates with you.
  • Read more about self-assessment here.

Build Your Network: With whom should you exchange insight and information?

  • Conduct informational interviews via resources such as the Penn Alumni Career Network and LinkedIn.
  • Join a professional association or career-related group.
  • Set up a LinkedIn profile.
  • Become active in your alumni organization and online groups.

Plan for Professional Development: What do you need to learn and strengthen?

  • Attend a career-related seminar or conference.
  • Take a class.
  • Apply to get a certificate or another degree.
  • Participate in a project that will help you develop targeted skills and broaden your exposure.
  • Read more about professional development here.

Cultivate Professional Presence:  How can you find new opportunities to apply, share, and highlight your skills, strengths and expertise?

  • Join a committee in your office or in a professional association.
  • Write an article for a blog or newsletter.
  • Initiate or participate in a social media discussion on LinkedIn or Twitter.
  • Present at a meeting or conference.
  • Volunteer at an organization of interest.

What You Said: “Work Is . . .”

What is work? . . . Drumroll, please. The jury has spoken.

With apologies regarding my thoroughly unscientific method, I want to share some of the input offered by you through my survey “What Is Work?” (still open to anyone who wants to complete it).

I asked respondents to define work ranging from “to earn a living” (1) to “a purposeful calling” (7) with “an even balance between the two” (4) in the middle. The ideal vs. realistic definitions of work swung from ideal being at the higher end of the scale—just above “an even balance between the two” (4.48)—to the realistic being closer to the bottom—near “to earn a living” (2.94), with over 50 percent of the responses being a 1 or 2.

This wasn’t a surprise. Most of us want and seek meaningful work but must balance that with the necessity of earning a living. The open-ended responses were more interesting.

  • 33% mentioned earning a living (“making ends meet,” “livelihood”).
  • 15% described doing something you “love” or “enjoy.”
  • 12% mentioned “money.”
  • 12% mentioned doing something “meaningful.”
  • 1% mentioned “enjoying” it.
  • Only one person used the word “occupation.”

The actual responses ranged from bluntly realistic to idealistically hopeful:

  • “slave labor”
  • “Beyond being a societal norm to have ‘work,’ people thrive on being busy.  It offers an important (at times frustrating) contrast to leisure.”
  • “Don’t know yet. What you do.”
  • “Work is a huge portion of one’s life. It is crucial that it is enjoyable and challenging so that one does not feel as if he or she is wasting away all of his or her time to earn a living, but obviously money cannot be ignored either.”
  • “A necessary part of life”
  • “Work is personal labor that fills our time and life with expressions of our particular gifts and skills.”

Thanks for your input! (The overwhelming majority of respondents were Penn undergrads but also included a handful of others (people employed full-time at Penn or elsewhere).) I find articles, opinions, and artistic creations about “work” very interesting and apropos—given my own work as a career counselor—and I’ve enjoyed sharing current Philadelphia artistic endeavors about work in two blog posts this year.

Considering Jobs

My favorite barista is a dancer. Today, while preparing another of her oh-so-perfect lattes, she mentioned that her dance company is interviewing people about what their jobs mean to them. They’re at the beginning of this creative endeavor, allowing the process itself to take them to an unknown destination. They do plan to create a dance. Will they interpret their interviewees’ stories through movement? Use interviewees’ words? Voices? Where will the interviewees’ stories lead the dancers? Where will the process itself lead them? Where will their artistry lead us all?

What is a job? What does “job” mean to you? Does it matter?

We’ve used the word since the 1620s, but I would guess that many seventeenth-century jobs are uninteresting to today’s students or no longer exist. According to Merriam-Webster, a job is “something that has to be done” or “a specific duty, role, or function” or “a regular remunerative position.” I assume most of us associate “job” with that third meaning, similar to dictionary.com’s “post of employment.”

None of these definitions address why we need a job, other than “remunerative.” (Perhaps a better definition might be “something your parents ask you about during spring break”!) “Remuneration” is something that rewards or pays. What the reward or pay might be is not part of the definition. So, what do you want your reward to be? A paycheck? A large paycheck? Vacation time? Healthcare? Prestige? Comfort? Luxury? Creating something? Changing an expectation? Providing care? Increasing knowledge? Changing the world?

These questions might not be on your next interviewer’s list, but they should be on your list so that you will know what you’re seeking, why, and how to demonstrate that you and the job “fit” one another. Exploring these questions with a friend, family member, or a career counselor (or on our website) is an ongoing, challenging, and meaningful exercise.

So, what do you think? A past blog of mine addressed a similar issue and invited readers to complete a survey. You are welcome to do so now, and to share this invitation with friends and family so that we have many responses.

As a career counselor and someone immensely curious—from a sociological and historical perspective—about “work,” I am looking forward to the future dance creation of Real Live People (in) Motion, and I’d love to read your thoughts in our survey.

Assessments to Help Explore Your Career

We’ve been getting quite a few questions from students regarding tests for career exploration.

We have several career assessments and inventories on our website here:

http://www.vpul.upenn.edu/careerservices/discovery/inventories.html

These tests assess your interests, skills, and values and help you to explore career opportunities that may be a good fit for you.

The most popular ones are Myers Briggs Type Indicator and Strong Interest Inventory.

Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is designed to assess the preferences linked to your personality.

The Strong Interest Inventory is designed to assess interests and preferred work styles and relate them to a variety of career fields and occupations.

Also on the website is a link to SIGI 3. SIGI 3 is a comprehensive, free career exploration tool that prompts you to discover your skills, interests, and values and matches the resulting profile to career options.

For current students, it costs $15 for one test and $30 for both.

For alumni, it costs $25 one test and $50 for both.

If you are a current student, the Counseling and Psychological Services office also provides these takes and gives workshops regarding the tests.

You can view information from CAPS here:

http://www.vpul.upenn.edu/caps/html/career.htm

StrengthsQuest is also an assessment tool which lists your top five talent themes and offers advice on how to leverage those talents to achieve success in academics, career planning, and leadership development.

For current students and alumni, it costs $15 to take StrengthsQuest.

You can take it here:

http://www.vpul.upenn.edu/careerservices/discovery/sq.html

Once you have completed your StrengthsQuest assessment, you will automatically receive access to a customized report based on your talents.  If you would like to discuss your results further, please contact the office to schedule a meeting with one of the following counselors based on your school.

After you have taken any of the above tests, you can schedule a talk with a career counselor for a comprehensive evaluation of your results and career options.