Assignment: Career Preparation

Chances are, the careers you are most interested in are closely aligned with your personal interests and hobbies.

For example, if you love the outdoors, you may see yourself working outside, possibly in agriculture, construction, or as a firefighter.


In the previous lessons, you have identified several careers that you believed would be a good fit for you based on your skills and interests. In this assignment, you will choose one of those careers and research it further.

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Pause and Think

A career is a job or profession someone has done for a long time. In the two previous lessons, you considered careers that aligned with your skills and interests. Today, you will combine those lists to choose a career that best fits you.

When your skills, interests, and career match, it can have numerous benefits, such as:

1. job satisfaction

2. long-term commitment

3. better work-life balance

4. personal growth

5. collaboration

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When your career aligns with your skills and interests, you are more likely to find your work fulfilling and enjoyable.

Your skills are things that you can do based on your experiences or practice, and your interests are things that you enjoy learning about or doing. Combining those into a career makes you more likely to look forward to your job, which can lead to greater overall job satisfaction.

Job Satisfaction

When your career aligns with your skills and interests, you are more likely to commit to it for the long term.

Spending multiple years with a company leads to career stability and typically more opportunities for advancement. Often, companies promote workers from within instead of hiring external employees with no experience at the company.

Long-Term Commitment

You might enjoy your work more if it is aligned with your skills and interests. This can make achieving a healthy work-life balance more manageable, meaning you can find the right amount of time for work and your personal life.

When you enjoy what you do and feel competent in it, you're less likely to experience work-related stress, and thus, you don't bring it home after your work day is complete.

Work-Life Balance

Your interests are things you enjoy learning about or doing, so often, they align with areas where you naturally excel or are willing to invest time in developing your skills.

This alignment encourages personal growth and continuous learning, enhancing self-esteem and confidence.

​Personal Growth

Pursuing a career you are passionate about can lead to networking opportunities with people who share your interests. Collaboration with like-minded individuals can be rewarding and lead to more significant career opportunities.

It can also offer opportunities to develop new skills or strengthen existing ones as you work with others on things that may require a range of abilities.

Collaboration

For each job, you considered the wage. A wage is the amount of money that a worker is paid based on how much they work. Wages are important to consider because they can impact your lifestyle choices such as:

• home

• car

• leisure activities

​​Wages

For each job, you also considered the outlook. The outlook is an indicator as to whether or not the career listed is expected to be in demand. This is significant because if an outlook is bright, it often means that there will be more opportunities in the future, which means better job security.

Outlook

​For each job, you considered the amount of education you might like to receive. Each person has a different vision for themselves.

Some people want to obtain on-the-job training after high school, while others want to move on to pursue a college education. It is important you know how much schooling (if any) your career requires.

Education

Recall that interests are things you enjoy doing or learning about. In the lesson “Identifying Your Interests,” you took a self-assessment that separated your interests into six categories:

1. realistic

2. investigative

3. artistic

4. social

5. enterprising

6. conventional

Your top three categories make up your Holland Code. Return to the end of the lesson to see which three categories made up your Holland Code.

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You are going to complete a worksheet that helps prepare you for a career that you believe aligns with your skills and interests.

To begin, you are going to save it and then read the directions on the next page to complete it. If you would like, you may print and complete it on paper and then upload an image, or you may complete it in Microsoft Word.

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​Return to the previous lessons labeled “Identifying your Skills” and “Identifying your Interests.” At the end of the lessons, you recorded your top three career choices after taking the self-assessment. Write each of them down for a total of six careers.

If some or all of them were the same from each lesson, it is okay to have less than six. Write next to the career “same for skills and interests,” so your teacher knows.

Circle the career that you believe would be the overall best fit for your interests and skills.

Step 1: Decide your Favorite Career

Using any of the three websites, record the job description for your favorite career.

Remember, a job description is a summary of what a person does in that position. On each of the websites, they are found in different spots.

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Step 3: Record Job Description

Remember that skills are the ability to do something that comes from training, experience, or practice. You may not have all of the skills needed for a particular career. Your worksheet differentiates between skills you have and skills you need to develop.

Think back to your lesson on discovering your skills. You recorded your top three skills. Do those still align with your chosen career? If so, record them in the worksheet under skills you have.

You may also record additional skills here that would support your chosen career. Perhaps you previewed the list on one of the websites and found that you had more skills associated with this career than you thought!

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Step 4: Record Your Skills

Learning new skills is really important for your body and brain! Remember that no one is born with all the skills they need for their career. The key is to recognize the skills you need, be willing to invest time and effort in developing them, and seek opportunities for growth and learning. Your career path can be a journey of continuous skill development and improvement.

So, which new skills do you think you may need to learn for your chosen career? Record them in the appropriate section on your worksheet.

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Skills to Develop

Compare your Holland Code from the lesson “Identifying Your Interests” with the interests shown on the O*NET OnLine or PA CareerZone career profile. Record the Holland Code categories that are the same. The categories are:

• realistic

• investigative

• artistic

• social

• enterprising

• conventional

Additionally, if you have general interests such as an interest in art, education, building, or outdoors, and your career is associated with that, include it here. You will not find general interests on the websites.

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Step 5: Record your Interests