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Career Module – Building You Career
CAREER
MODULE
BUILDING
YOUR CAREER
A career is defined as the sequence of work positions held by a person during his or her
lifetime. Students should realize that a person’s career is always under construction. It is
also important to remember who is ultimately responsible for the direction of a person’s
career – it’s not your mom, or your dad, or your employer. It’s You! In this module, the
authors give several important guidelines for helping students manage their careers.
What was Career Development Like, Historically?
A. Career development programs used to be designed to help employees advance
their work lives within a specific organization.
B. The focus of such programs was to provide employees the information,
assessment, and training needed to help them realize their career goals.
C. This approach has all but disappeared in today’s workplace due to downsizing,
restructuring, and other organizational adjustments.
What is Career Development Like, Now?
A. This idea of increased personal responsibility for one’s career has been described
as a boundaryless career.
B. One of the first decisions you have to make is a career choice.
C. The optimum choice is one that offers the best match between what you want
out of life and your interests, your abilities and personality, and market
opportunities.
D. Findings from a recent survey by Capital One Financial Corporation:
1. 66 percent of college graduates said that a comprehensive benefits
package was the most important factor in their job search.
2. Starting salary ranked second at 64 percent, with
3. Job location ranked third at 60 percent.
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Copyright © 2017 Pearson Education, Inc.
Career Module – Building You Career
E. Today’s college grads are also looking to be rewarded or compensated (with comp
time or matching donations, for instance) for their volunteer and philanthropic
activities.
How Can I Have a Successful Career?
A. Getting a college education is the surest way to increase your lifetime earnings.
1. The average high school graduate earns $27,915 a year.
2. The average college degree earns $51,206.
3. College graduates earn, on average, $800,000 more than high school
graduates over their working career.
B. Here are some suggestions that will help students on the path to a successful
career:
1. Assess Your Personal Strengths and Weaknesses.
a. Understand yourself—your abilities and disabilities; your strengths
and weaknesses.
b. Play to your strengths.
2. Identify Market Opportunities.
a. Regardless of your strengths, certain job categories are likely to decline
in the coming decades.
b. Opportunities often exist when there is change.
c. Take advantage of changes created by an increasingly aging society,
continued emphasis on technology, increased spending on education and
training, and concern with personal security.
d. These factors are likely to create excellent opportunities for jobs in
gerontological counseling, network administration, training consultants,
and security alarm installers.
3. Take Responsibility for Managing Your Own Career.
a. In these times, everyone will need to take responsibility for his/her own
careers.
b. It is your responsibility to protect your career from harm and position
yourself to benefit from changes in the environment.
4. Develop Your Interpersonal Skills.
a. Employers are especially looking for interpersonal skills such as
communication skills.
5. Practice Makes Perfect.
a. There’s an increasing amount of evidence indicating that super-high
achievers aren’t fundamentally different from the rest of us.
b. Studies show that world-class performers put in a lot of practice to be
great at what they do.
6. Stay Up to Date.
a. To keep your career on track, you need to make learning a lifetime
commitment. You should be continually “going to school”—if not taking
formal courses, then reading books and journals to ensure that you don’t
get caught with obsolete skills.
7. Network.
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Copyright © 2017 Pearson Education, Inc.
Career Module – Building You Career
a. Networking refers to creating and maintaining beneficial relationships
with others in and related to your chosen career in order to accomplish
your goals.
b. Whether you are looking for a job or not, everyone should cultivate a
broad set of relationships.
c. Business networking groups such as LinkedIn, Spoke, and Talkbiznow
are good sources for staying connected.
8. Stay Visible.
a. It is important to engage in activities that promote your personal brand.
b. Examples of staying visible include writing articles in your professional
journals, teaching classes or giving talks in your area of expertise,
attending conferences and professional meetings.
9. Seek a Mentor.
a. Mentoring can be very helpful in finding and establishing careers.
b. Employees with mentors are likely to have enhanced mobility, increased
knowledge of the organization’s inside workings, greater access to senior
executives, increased satisfaction, and increased visibility.
c. For women and minorities, having mentors has been shown to be
particularly helpful in promoting career advancement and success.
10. Leverage Your Competitive Advantage.
a. Develop skills that will give you a competitive advantage in the
marketplace.
b. Focus on skills that are important to employers, skills that are scarce, and
areas where you have limited competition.
c. You don’t have to be good at everything but you will need to be good at
something that others aren’t and that society values.
11. Don’t Shun Risks.
a. If you want to improve your career, then you will need to take chances.
b. Going back to school, moving to a new state or country, or quitting a job
to start your own business can be the decision that will set your life in a
completely new direction.
12. It is OK to Change Jobs.
a. There is no longer a stigma associated with moving from job to job.
b. To keep your skills fresh, your income increasing, and your job tasks
interesting, it will be increasingly likely that you’ll need to change
employers.
13. Opportunities, Preparation, and Luck = Success.
a. Success also requires a little luck.
b. Success is a matter of matching up opportunities, preparation, and luck.
c. If you’re lucky, you will recognize those opportunities, have made the
proper preparations, and will then act on them.
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Copyright © 2017 Pearson Education, Inc.
