Who am I? Where am I going? How do I get there?

 

These three big questions lie at the center of any career search. Coming up with the answers is easier said than done, yet giving careful consideration to each in turn can guide you toward finding and landing a fulfilling career. With the Just In Time career fair coming up in April, we've planned a two-part issue of Future 411 designed to prepare grad students for the fair. This month's issue will be devoted to self-exploration: answering the question-Who am I?- and thinking about what shape the next step in your career might take. Then, next month, we'll help you fine-tune your marketing documents and sharpen your networking skills.

 

While self-exploration might seem a daunting task, you must understand your strengths, your skills, and what brings you satisfaction in order to create effective marketing documents, such as resumes, CV's and cover letters. Career Services offers a number of assessments designed to assist you in exploring and articulating your strengths, interests, and personality traits- Strengths Quest, Strong Interest Inventory, Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, and VIA. While I had never considered using assessments as a professional tool (my only other experience, a Myers Briggs test in high school, had not left a strong impression) taking these assessments and discussing the results with various counselors turned out to be an exciting and illuminating process. For instance, discussing my Strengths Quest results with a career counselor has helped me to recognize certain strengths that I had previously taken for granted. Although focus and drive have always been essential components of my personality, my assessment results confirmed and reframed these strengths, boosting my confidence and prompting me to tailor my resume using stronger, strengths-based language.

 

Read on for more first-hand accounts of the powers of self-exploration. Both Ankit Saxena, a fellow grad student, and Blair Fraser, a career counselor, offer their own stories and their valuable advice for grad students. We've also included a couple of really great pieces from Vitae and Inside Higher Ed. Stressing the importance of preparation and self assessment, these articles offer grad students both practical guidance and opportunity for reflection. I hope everyone is able to take advantage of the excellent resources in this month's issue and, as always, I encourage you to make use of the Career Services office-we all face big life decisions in grad school, and your CS staff is here to help!

 

Wishing everyone a relaxing and reflective spring break,

 

Trish & Annie

Professional Advice 

 

In this insightful article, Dr. Emily Mace offers ten suggestions to help graduate students prepare for alt-ac or post-ac careers. Mace stresses introspection as a key component to the decision-making process and emphasizes that knowing what skills you value most and what sort of work/life balance makes you happy are essential to planning your career path. Whether or not you're planning on an academic career, Mace's advice will help you prepare for the unknown and unknowable aspects of your career path. Read the article here.

 

 Inside Higher Ed

 

Gover's essay focuses on preparing for the non-academic job search. The first step? Self-assessment. She stresses the importance of knowing yourself and recommends taking a variety of self-assessments-like the ones offered at our Career Services office-as a way to start that process: "The bottom line is that you cannot find a satisfying career if you don't take the time to discover your own needs, ideas, and skills." This essay offers an excellent course of action for those who want to be prepared for a non-academic career. Read the article here.