4 Ways to Enhance Career Exploration in College
College is an important period of self-discovery. It is a time to learn more about yourself: your interests, your passions, what you want to do in the future. It can be intimidating, but it is also exciting to think about all the opportunities that lay before you. Though you might not know exactly what you want to do, it is important that you get an early start in exploring your different career options.
As a college student, you have access to many different resources that will enhance your career exploration and help guide you toward making the right decision. Here are a few of the most useful career exploration resources:
College Career Services
The first resources you should look to are your school’s career services. Many colleges have a Career Services Center, which can offer you handbooks and manuals from different industries, as well as books on searching for work, interviewing and relevant statistics. More often than not, you’ll also find a copy of the Occupational Outlook Handbook, an annual guide released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which breaks down major career industries by salary, job market, competitiveness and necessary skills.
Career Services Centers are also great because you can meet with a career counselor, who can talk with you about your interests and options, steering you toward paths that might be a good fit for you and helping you avoid some of the missteps of career exploration. They can help you build your resume, cover letter and interview skills. Career counselors may also be able to help you find work or an internship, as many Career Services Centers maintain a database of job postings.
Online Career Resources
Knowing a bit about the careers you’re interested in before you start exploring is important, but when there is so much to learn, it can seem overwhelming. Luckily, there are many online resources that provide a well-rounded introduction to particular career fields. Teach.com, for instance, offers information about becoming a teacher, including a breakdown of the requirements necessary to obtain your teaching certification. Similarly, NursingLicenseMap.com provides the licensing requirements for becoming a nurse in each state across the country. Such sites can also help you navigate the road to graduate school. HowToMBA.com, for example, walks you through the process of searching for and obtaining your Master of Business Administration degree.
Social Media
Social media is becoming an invaluable tool in the job market, helping people build professional connections and keep in touch with the world around them. Facebook is one of the most widely used social networking websites and is being used more frequently by companies to announce news, upcoming events and even job openings. Additionally, there are Facebook groups you can join to pool resources and connect with people in your field of interest; a good place to start would be with your school’s alumni group or a student organization page.
LinkedIn is another social network used by job seekers and employers to connect with one another, and it has grown to become the world’s largest professional network. Twitter is yet another popular social network, and it features a number of chats geared toward offering college students career advice; a few examples are #InternPro, #CareerChat and #GenYChat. These chats allow people to connect via Twitter to share resources, advice and other information about finding a job.
Career Management Websites
You may be familiar with websites like Monster.com and CareerBuilder.com, but these are just a few of a plethora of websites that not only post jobs — they also can help you become more visible and appealing to employers. They offer advice to help you build your resume and hone your job search to yield the most productive results; they let you create profiles to upload your resume and share important professional information about yourself. Many of them have a broad scope, like Monster.com, but there are others catered to particular sectors. If you’re only looking to work in nonprofit industries, for example, there is Idealist.org. Similarly, Brazen Careerist is aimed specifically at young, aspiring professionals just entering the workforce, with information about recruiting events, job fairs and more.
This post is written by Erica Moss, who is the community manager for the MSN degree program at Georgetown University, offering one of the nation’s leading online nurse practitioner programs. She’s also an avid dog lover who enjoys photography and meeting new people.