Saturday, September 27, 2014

Career Planning Life Cycle





There are three steps in achieving career goals and searching for a job. 

Step One: Get a Clear Career Goal

The first step in search for a job is setting a career goal

In order to set a career goal, you have to take inventory of yourself to determine what you can offer an employer. 

You need to –

  • Build awareness, knowledge and understanding of our strengths, interests, abilities, and skills
  • List your ambitions, values, education, and experiences
  • Determine your job preferences –job duties, salary, geographic location, and work conditions

Step Two: Explore Career Options

In order to identify potential careers, you may use career exploration and social media resources to gather the following occupational information –

  • Labor market
  • Work industries
  • Companies, organizations, or agencies
  • Specific careers
Use online career exploration resources to identify potential careers.

Step Three: Overcome Career Roadblocks

When you are trying to reach a career goal, there will always be obstacles.  You solve career problems by completing the following steps –

  • Identify educational and career planning obstacles
  • Create solutions or courses of action
  • Set achievable goals
  • Resolve conflicts
  • Commit to reach our goals

Step Four: Execution

You execute your career plans when you use different strategies –

  • Reality testing
  • Social Media
  • Job Search Strategies – Resume Writing and Interview Preparation

Reality Testing
While implementing and, you translate vocational interests, abilities, and skills into job opportunities. You do reality testing by implementing a variety of strategies.


Social Media and Networking Tools

Networking can help you complete targeted job searches.  You can use a variety of social media tools to learn and connect with professional associations and potential employers. Three major networking social media tools are –

  • Twitter
  • Linkedin
  • Facebook

Resume Writing and Interviewing Strategies

Resume writing and interview preparation are essential skills needed to land a potential job.


Types of resumes are –

  • Chronological – listing experiences in reverse chronological order
  • Functional – emphasizing specific skills

Interviewing

There are steps to prepare for a successful interview -

  • Review common interview questions
  • Prepare for behavior or STAR interviews
  • Practice - Practice is essential for a successful interview.
  • Dress for success

The Career Planning Life Cycle is used with a variety of career tests.

Read more...

Saturday, September 20, 2014

Tweet Future Goals - Merging Social Media and Career Development




 Use Social Media Tools to Discover and Target Future Goals

The social media has caused a shift in the way we discover our future goals.

Social media also improves our success in understanding,communicating and sharing information about educational and career plans.


Use Social Media to Bridge the Generation Gap: A Word to Parents and Professionals


Awareness of the generations is necessary to engage and connect with other generation.  Knowing the differences makes communication easier.

As an example, Millennials and Generation Z have unique characteristics.  They are -


  1. Technologically sophisticated: Digital natives, Native speakers, Nets, Internet generation, iGeneration and Nintendo digital generation
  2. Optimistic: Generation Y and Sunshine generation, an inclusive and hopeful generation
  3. Generation C:  Connected, communicating, content-centric, computerized, community-oriented, always clicking

Types of Social Media


Expertise with social media tools is important.  Media technology promotes social networking, career exploration, and future educational planning.

According to Michael Wu, Ph.D., two major types of media tools:
  • Social Networks
  • Online Communities

Popular social media tools, mobile and web technologies,  include Facebook, Linkedin, and TwitterMedia Technology helps us -


  • Provide 24/7 access to resources, e.g. the US News and World Report (2012) discussed how High School Students Increasingly Use Social Media for College Search.
  • Provide and receive immediate feedback
  • Engage and connect with colleges, employers, companies, coaches, mentors, and other students
  • Build networks
  • Collaborate with others with shared interests
  • Make your future plans

Hollandcodes.com has a variety of social media tools -
  • Resource One: Facebook
  • Resource Two: Twitter
  • Resource Three: LinkedIn





Twitter is an information network, an online social networking service, and a microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based messages of up to 140 characters, known as "tweets".




LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional business-oriented social networking service with over 175 million members and growing rapidly.

There are different reasons to use LinkedIn –

  • Networking – Connect with professionals
  • Recruitment
  • People, company, and industry research
  • Job Email Alerts
  • Discussion groups
  • Branding
  • Job Search
  • Interview preparation
  • College or field of study research – LinkedIn for Education



Facebook has 70,000 users, 3 million daily page views and 90 million monthly page views.
Hollandcodes.com uses Facebook to display information about a variety of career development and social media topics.

Read more about social media... 

New articles will be posted daily.  

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Saturday, September 13, 2014

Using Twitter as a Career Development Tool: A Middle School Experience





Article reprinted from NCDA Career Convergence http://ow.ly/Bthik

Written by Allison Rosemond

The use of social media in career development continues to grow. From college career centers using Facebook for marketing career services to career-seekers using LinkedIn for networking, social media sites are fast becoming a mainstay of the career development process for adults. However, only within the last few years has the use of social media for career development trickled down to K-12 public schools. To help close the gap, readers will be introduced to the use of Twitter for virtual job shadowing at a middle school, consisting of 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students who learn through the experience of professionals representing several career clusters using 140 characters or less.

In the Beginning

The goal of this project was to design an age appropriate career activity using a medium familiar to students. To accomplish this goal, the author utilized a modified version of a Twitter-based virtual job shadowing activity developed by the Southeast Florida Information Network with permission from the Manager of Staff Development Services. The final version was tweaked to suit the needs and capabilities of the school and students.

Planning

The first stage of the planning involved identifying the resources needed. The project required participants to have access to the Internet and Twitter throughout the day to tweet about their daily tasks, special projects, etc. After reviewing the list of the 16 federal career clusters, the school surmised that careers within the Information Technology, Business, Marketing & Sales and Arts, A/V Technology & Communications career clusters would be appropriate. Likewise, students would need to have access to the Internet, so the Keyboarding classes were chosen to conduct the interaction.
To recruit participants, businesses were contacted through their Human Resources or Public Relations department. To promote the idea, the project was described as a way for employees to share information about their careers in a casual manner with little interruption to the business day, in ways that will allow students to broaden their knowledge of the World of Work without having to leave campus.

Next, the school corresponded with and secured confirmation from interested employees. Overall, seven businesses and 15 employees participated. Also, the school collaborated with the Coordinator of the local Regional Education Center (REC) for Greenville County South Carolina to offer an orientation. South Carolina has 12 RECs across the state to assist in the implementation of Personal Pathways to Success, the state’s interpretation of the Education and Economic Development Act (2005). Through the collaboration with the local REC, the orientation allowed the participants to learn details of the virtual job shadowing project and, receive a Twitter ‘crash course’, about setting up an account and sending tweets. Employees were required to make their Twitter accounts public for the duration of the project.

The Project

Each participating class received an introduction to the project and a 3-5 minute Twitter tutorial. Prior to tweeting, students conducted research, using O*Net, on a career of one of the employees by locating the following information:
  • Tasks
  • Work Activities, Styles, and Values
  • Education required
  • RIASEC Interest Code
  • Median Hourly Wage (for South Carolina)
  • Projected Growth (for South Carolina)
The first class received an initial tweet from each participating employee that read:
 “Welcome to my day! Just started (specific task) as (job title) for (company).” #GMSvirtualjs
Each subsequent class reviewed the timeline of tweets exchanged before sending new tweets. One by one, students came to the front of the classroom to send tweets from a chosen computer, as the Twitter feed was shown on the Promethean Board for all to see. The employees also tweeted pictures, so students could see their colleagues, office amenities and office spaces.
Participating employees were able to respond to students’ questions regarding:
  • how you got your start in this career- what or who encouraged you to pursue it
  • interesting things about your career
  • uninteresting things about your career
  • hobbies or extracurricular activities that can prepare someone for this career
  • high school/college classes someone can take to prepare for this career
Follow-up

The success of the project was measured by how well the students were engaged during the project and from feedback received from participants’ survey. It is our experience that the students were absorbed and challenged by the project. Students commented that “the project was a fun way to do virtual job shadowing, instead of just watching career videos” and many were excited to go home and show the tweets to their parents. The participants’ survey pointed out that the project was well organized.

Recommendations for future projects
  • Allow students to take ownership of the project;
  • Have fewer teacher prompts, more student-directed tweets;
  • A classroom environment, with no more than 35 students, works well and, tweets should be sent from one designated computer, with an adult supervisor present;
  • Spread the project across an entire day instead of a few class periods, to allow a larger number of students to learn about a greater variety of job tasks within a career;
  • Develop a clear explanation of what information employees should share and, allow employees to view the O*Net research activity being conducted by students, for an understanding of prior knowledge students will have about employees’ careers.

To view the students’ O*Net research activity and participant survey, email the author at arosemond@greenville.k12.sc.us. For more information on Personal Pathways to Success, visit www.scpathways.org.

Source:  “The article, Using Twitter as a Career Development Tool: A Middle School Experience, by Allison Rosemond, originally appeared in NCDA's web magazine, Career Convergence, at www.ncda.org. Copyright © 11/2012. Linked with permission.”  

To get more information about career development and social media.

Convergence of Career Development and Social Media


Social media tools are mobile and web technologies, e.g. Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter.


Media technology promotes social networking, using already existing contacts to meet new people as potential social or business links.


According to Michael Wu, Ph.D., two major types of media tools:



Media Technology helps us -
  • Create collaborative environments
  • Promote critical thinking,  innovation, and creativity
  • Provide immediate feedback
  • Engage and connect with students
  • Provide 24/7 access to resources
  • Build Personal Learning Networks

Review the examples, highlights, descriptions, illustrations, and contact information for these applications -

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