Tag: choosing_a_career

Posted on

10 Tips for Getting the Most Out of Your College Internship

Note from Leonard: From time to time, experts with something great to say ask if they can be included on this blog.  When their information will complement and add to the ongoing discussion here, I am excited to present them. Today’s post is from Rose Jensen about how college students can truly benefit from an internship. Rose offers a great list of specific tips.  These are mostly pretty simple to do yet can yield a lot of information and future benefit (plus make your internship more engaging and fun).

As a college student, one of the most valuable ways you can prepare for your career is to get an internship. Even if your internship doesn’t lead to the exact career path you end up choosing, you’ll gain hands-on professional experience, make contacts in the industry, learn a new set of marketable skills, and prove your reliability and commitment. Internships are also great ways to explore a field and determine whether or not you’d like to continue in that industry after graduation. But before you get too complacent just because you’ve been selected for an internship, check out these 10 tips for making sure you make the most out of your experience.

1.    Show up on time. Being punctual gets you huge points in the dependability department, and if you’re always available whenever your boss needs you, you can expect a great recommendation letter when you leave.

2.    Get to know everyone in the office. You might feel intimidated at first, but make a point to chat a little with each person in the office as a way of learning more about the industry and building up your contacts.

3.    Ask questions. Internships are learning experiences, so the more questions you ask about the industry in general and your specific to-do list, can only help.

4.    Set goals. Determine what you want to get out of the internship and set goals for achieving it. With a more focused outlook, you’ll be more efficient at achieving your goals.

5.    Be positive. Don’t kid yourself: interns often have to schlep papers, get coffee and do a lot of filing. Just be grateful that you’ve got something to add to your resume and an inside look at the job you may one day have.

6.    Take on more tasks. Even if it isn’t offered, don’t be afraid to take on greater responsibility and help out more in general if you can handle it. You’ll meet more people and demonstrate your capability.

7.    Send a thank you note. After your last day, send thank you notes to everyone you worked with in the office. It’s not always necessary, but going beyond what’s expected will ensure you leave on a positive note.

8.    Attend special events. Offer to help out at special events to increase your exposure and networking opportunities.

9.    Be professional. Even though everyone recognizes you’re still the college kid, acting professionally and as if you could fit into the office culture will help your chances of getting a job after you graduate.

10.    Ask for an exit interview. Spend a few minutes with your manager to go over your demonstrated strengths and weaknesses. This meeting will also help you figure out what to include on your resume.

Today’s guest blogger is Rose Jensen.  Rose writes about the best online universities. She welcomes your feedback at Rose.Jensen28@ yahoo.com

Posted on

Test Drive Your Career Idea

I just read a fascinating if a bit utopian essay in New Scientist magazine about the possibility of creating virtual twins for each of us.  Our online twin would be programmed with all of our medical characteristics so that we would have a much better idea of what specific health care treatments will work for us as individuals, and what the long and short term effects would be.   It would be like giving different treatments a test ride before deciding on them.

Wouldn’t it be cool if we could have our virtual twin also test out different careers or jobs for us?  OK, no one’s working on this one just yet.  But for now, maybe we can take some steps that will help us decide what careers are best for us without having to invest in years of training and coursework as well as months or years in jobs and careers that don’t really engage us or feel meaningful to us.  Maybe we can give our careers a test drive first.

How to test out a career

1.  Information interviews—the classic best way to network and find out about jobs can also give you a sense of whether you would like a career path.  Not only do you learn about a job and career from someone in the field, you can also check out exactly what the interviewee loves and hates about the work.   If you do a good interview, you’ll be able to find out how similar that person is to you in their work preferences, passions, and dreams.  They don’t have to be just like you.   But wherever they are similar to you, that’s where to find out how well they love or hate their work and decide if that might be your response.

2.  Shadow (in a good way).  This technique might be a good follow-up to an informational interview that went well with someone you feel an affinity with.  Or it could be with someone else entirely.  Ask if you can shadow or literally follow them for a day or half day just to see what their job is actually like in the trenches.  This might be easier to pull off if you can do this as part of a school project.

3.  Volunteer or intern for work in a field you might be interested in.  You can find out what people actually do all day at their jobs and what the organization is like.  That can be quite eye opening.   You might find yourself very disillusioned about what goes on behind the scenes or you might find it thrilling.

4.  Pilot and prototype.  Ever thought you might like to be a travel agent?  Interior designer? Caterer?  For many consumer fields, you can test out your skills and interests with friends and family before launching into an actual job or your own business.

Learn about the field as much as you can (including perhaps being a client for someone else first) and then when you feel you can pilot your work, ask friends or family if they’ll be your guinea pigs.  You can play travel agent by helping to plan a complex trip or try interior decorating on a room in a friend’s house, etc.    

This isn’t like having a virtual twin test out the work, but it is a way to find out experientially how well the career or job will suit you.  It offers you a bit more of the nitty-gritty about a career than reviewing course descriptions about a field or reviewing your skills and seeing how they match with what’s needed.

–Career changers, jobseekers–Be sure to sign up for free career and creativity ezine and get your career info bonus

© 2009 Leonard Lang. Feel free to reprint or pass on this article as long as you include the copyright notice and the link to http://choosingacareerblog.com

Posted on

Imagining Your New Career

You might have heard some statement or seen a quote like this.

If you can imagine it–you can do it.

This concept is good for helping people open up their thinking to new goals or careers.  On the other hand, the fact that you can imagine yourself as president of the US or the first astronaut to Mars or the winner of American Idol, doesn’t mean that you will succeed or even that you are best off pursuing those goals.

But the other side of this statement is something everyone needs to remember

If you can’t imagine it, you’ll never do it.

That’s much more reliably true.  If you can’t imagine yourself owning your own business or becoming an engineer–then you almost certainly will not pursue these careers at all.

With both of these statements in mind, I have my classes and career coaching clients imagine as specifically and concretely as possible what their ideal careers might look like.  This exercise is great as a thought experiment (if thought experiments were good enough for Einstein, why not you and me?), so that you can actually try out a number of career scenarios.  Not only does it help you imagine something so it can become real.  It also allows you to safely “test” how much you really want to pursue each career you test.

Here’s what you do:

  • Choose any new, great career or work situation you might like to consider
  • Imagine you just completed a typical work day
  • Go through what you did and jot it down in detail as if recording a day log at the end of your day, hour by hour (or more frequently).
  • Be specific–9–945 am, had meeting with my business partner about how to approach a new client’s problem of xxx (whatever problem a client of yours might have).
  • Go through the entire day in this kind of detail.

If you’re not sure what a person might do in your imagined new career, go do some informational interviews first with people in the field or read about the career.  Find out what the daily work life is like because some careers sound glamorous but be filled with activities you don’t want to do.

Write a few such days for each imagined career and maybe some days for alternative careers or jobs to see what each looks and feels like.

Very important–it does not have to be your ideal day, only a typical day in a potentially idea career.

Then, the most important step–reread what you wrote and ask yourself: If this was an actual typical day in my life, how would I feel about it, about my career, about myself?  This gut-check portion is a great test.  Very often, my clients or class members will come up with a day that makes them smile, but when asked if the day would be something they were happy with if it became real right now–they start coming up with fears, doubts, and changes.

That’s a GOOD thing.  That’s how you can then reshape the day to be more perfect.

If a fear comes up, identify it.  That may tell you what’s been holding you back in pursuing this imagined career or job.

As simple as this exercise is, it can be one of the most powerful as it so fully engages all of your senses and thoughts and desires if you let yourself really do it without holding back because it’s not realistic or what others think you could do.

It’s fast, fun, and can offer fantastic insights.  Why not give it a try or two.

Posted on

Need a Career Change?

It may seem like a no-brainer, but I’ve seen it many times–people who are certain they hate their career, everything about the line of work they are in.  They come to class or to coaching looking for a new passionate career.  And then find out their passion leads them to the same career.

I’ve seen people ranging from nurses to construction workers start fighting their own conclusions as they realize that what they really want to do is exactly what they’ve been doing.  After all, they know they are unhappy at work.  What’s going on?

Usually, it’s because they are stressed over a bad boss or being overworked or not challenged in new ways.  The career is fine, the particular job or work enviornment is not.

So how can you distinguish between needing a new career or a new job?  Here are 3 quick, basic questions that can help.

1.    When you think of staying in your current job, but in ideal circumstance in terms of bosses and pay and appreciation (the work environment and culture), how do you feel on a scale of 1—10?

2.    What are the 3 best things about your current job? 

3.    What’s the 3 worst things about your current job?

Review your results and

1.    If your ideal version of your current job is less than a 7, then your career and not just the job may be the problem. 

2.    If the best thing about your current job has nothing to do with the actual work and results but with things like “the coffee breaks” or “the person in the next cubicle” or “the benefits” 

3.    AND if the worst things are all about what you actually are supposed to be spending your time doing, then your career may be the deeper problem.

By contrast, if your ideal version of the current job is 8, 9, or 10, the best thing about the job are job activities themselves, and the worst things are all about how your boss treats you or the pay or hours—then it’s probably not about your career.  It’s about your current work environment, so don’t rush off into another field, at least not until you first try to do something about your environment.  If that fails, look to another job, but not another career.

A career coach can help with career or job issues, but whether you work on your own to figure this out or with a coach, you need to identify the specific, ongoing things that are making you feel like you need to leave—your job or your career.

–Career changers, jobseekers–Be sure to sign up for free career and creativity ezine and get your career info bonus


 

Posted on

How to Choose A Career–Tips from the MBA Application Process

Here’s a career idea that can be another aid in helping you choose a career, even though it is intended for a more narrow purpose (where it’s also useful).

Yesterday, I posted links to a Wall Street Journal study about the finanical value (or lack of it) for an MBA.  Here’s what I think is a very cool follow up.  It’s from the University of Virginia B school, but here’s the thing.  What she’s saying on this video is is ALSO relevant to ANYONE thinking about career choices in general–not just about MBA programs.

For instance, she talks about asking people who know you when they’ve noticed that you were most excited or most frustrated in the past few months.  She suggests that applicants use this as a way of writing a good MBA application essay (and not bore the heck out of the readers). 

But don’t be fooled.  You can also mine this information to help you find what you have real passion for doing and what is challenging and what is just not your cup of tea. 

Others can’t tell you what you should be doing. Tests can’t tell you.  Even career coaches, all knowing as we (think we) are, certainly can’t.  However, people who know you CAN give you concrete examples of what they’ve seen that can help you get clearer about what kinds of things you consistently love.  It’s up to you (with the further support of friends, family, and possibly career coaches) to see how to tap into those situations to decide what kinds of careers match those situations. 

In other words, you are a detective and these are clues about your happiness.  Sure, the exact thing that you were passionate about may not be the career you will choose (say teaching your girlfriend how to ski).  But it may well give you info about how much people interaction you want, how much you want something where learning or teaching is important, etc.

So watch the video and see if her essay suggestions spark some good thinking on your part or that of your friends and relatives.

If you want me, your friendly career coach, to write more about how to use your passions to determine your career, post a comment or send me an email.  

If you want some info about career coaching, also send me an email or check out my business site

So here is the YouTube video from Sara Neher, Darden’s Director of MBA Admissions (University of Virginia)