BROOKLYN EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITY CENTER COLLEGE CONNECTIONS

Transcription

1 ACTIVITY: CAREER COMPARISON Your main purpose is to describe the advantages and disadvantages of two career options. The value of comparing two career options is that you might see something in one that you might not find in the other. This will encourage you to evaluate how important the presence or absence of this factor is to you. STEP 1 ASK THE RIGHT QUESTIONS Step 1.1 Selection of Questions Select at least one question from each of the four types of questions that you need to consider in selecting a career option. Nature of the work Entry requirements Rewards and benefits Outlook for the future 1

2 Step 1.2 Selection of Two Career Options Write in your selections. CAREER OPTION 1 CAREER OPTION 2 STEP 2 SEARCH FOR INFORMATION Use one of the standard references, such as the Occupational Outlook Handbook. Search for information from the sources that you selected and answer the questions from Step 1. CAREER OPTION 1 CAREER OPTION 2

3 STEP 3 ANALYZE YOUR FINDINGS Step 3.1 Comparison of Advantages and Disadvantages List the advantages and disadvantages of each career option. Option 1 ADVANTAGES (+) DISADVANTAGES ( ) Option 2 ADVANTAGES (+) DISADVANTAGES ( ) Reminders Examine how well a career option fits (or does not fit) you as a person - your values, personality type, interests, and skills. Think about the skills that you would learn if you went into this field. Skills that you value acquiring would be listed on the advantage side. Look into the future and imagine how you would like working with the people in this field. List those values and life priorities that you share on the advantage side; those that you don't, on the disadvantage side. Costs and rewards are practical issues. Look carefully at the costs of pursuing the education required to enter each option that you researched, and the economic rewards associated with working there. Finally, list any internal or external obstacles that must be overcome on the disadvantage side. Step 3.2 Select the Better of These Two Options Review your analysis. Typically, every possibility has both good points and drawbacks. Which career option is more appealing based on your research so far? Career option 3

4 The reasons that I selected this option are STEP 4 PLAN YOUR NEXT ACTIONS Step 4.1 Learning Summary What did you learn that will be useful to you in the future? Step 4.2 Two Additional Career Options List two additional career options to look at as you continue to explore your career options. END MATCHING CAREER OPTION TO RELATED COLLEGE MAJOR The next task you have is to focus on selecting a major. For many jobs, the choice of college major is not as important as the actual degree, but choosing a major (or combination of majors and minors) that is directly related to your choice of career often provides a deeper level of skills and understanding of the subject as well as opens door to internships, co-ops, and other part-time work experience in the field prior to graduation. Use the information gathered for the career information database to help determine the best college major. BigFuture: On this College Board site, you can enter the keyword in the Want to explore career options, Want to explore college majors or Explore career options: What are you into? on the right hand side of the web page to conduct an initial search. The search will result in many pages that display specific careers and job titles that you may explore to drill down for additional information. The career profile that you see following this step will show you related college majors, along with related careers, on the right hand side of the career profile page. But for this task, you should select from one of the CAREER CATEGORIES to expand your options. Then select one of the career sub-categories from is most similar to one of the career options you are examining.

5 MAJOR CATEGORIES Arts, Entertainment, and Sports Business Health and Medicine Multi-/Interdisciplinary Studies Public and Social Services Science, Math, and Technology Social Sciences Trades and Personal Services The resulting page has career information broken up into the following headings: Are You Ready To...? It Helps To Be... Make High School Count Outlook Compensation Clicking on a RELATED MAJORS will then lead to a college major profile with a description of the major and the following headings: Are You Ready To...? It Helps To Be... College Checklist Course Spotlight CAREER CATEGORIES Arts, Entertainment, and Sports Business Health and Medicine Media and Social Sciences Public and Social Services Science, Math, and Technology Trades and Personal Services On the right hand side, you have the following headings EDUCATION RELATED MAJORS RELATED CAREERS DID YOU KNOW? On the right hand side, you have the following headings Which colleges offer a major in? Find out now DEGREE TYPE HELPFUL HIGH SCHOOL COURSES TYPICAL MAJOR COURSES RELATED MAJORS (Links) RELATED CAREERS (Links) Clicking on the FIND OUT NOW link shows a list of colleges that offer the major. From here, you can use filters on the left hand side to narrow your list of colleges. MyMajors: A similar function is provided by MyMajors.com. You may conduct a match by selecting a career cluster on the left hand side of the page and a list of college majors appears on the right hand side. By clicking on a major you will be led to a career page that has a job description, activities, education requirements, colleges offering related programs, skills, knowledge, work styles, work values, and salary information. In some cases, you may see a video related to the college major. 5