Emilio Lorenzo is the assistant director of career advisement in NSU’s Office of Career Development. Emilio understands the importance of helping students reach their career goals and works with all students, including undergraduate, graduate and professional level students, to achieve their professional goals.
Emily Tasca is a member of the career advisement team in NSU’s Office of Career Development. She works with current students and alumni at the undergraduate, graduate and professional levels to ensure that each individual is supported throughout his or her career exploration and planning process.
Just like every good coach must strategize for a victorious season, you, as an aspiring professional in your desired career, must develop a strategic game plan for your success, not just upon graduation, but within your first year on campus. Throughout your four years, you should set mini-goals or planned initiatives you hope to accomplish, which will put you in an advantageous position as you move along your collegiate journey.
FIRST YEAR: Explore, identify, set plan in motion
Just like a traveler who has arrived on a new island, he or she would probably explore the surroundings while taking an inventory of valuable resources that can support him or her on this adventurous journey. You, as a college student, should have this same exploratory mindset during your first year, which can be a catalyst to ease your transition into this new environment.
A good first step is to begin experiencing the services available to students on campus, including but not limited to, academic advising, career advising, tutoring and testing, undergraduate student success and student activities. Each of these offices can assist you in exploring opportunities available within the university, as well as help you clarify your specific interest areas while providing support to be successful in these career tracks. Additionally, you can continue exploring on your own by joining student groups related to your interests or getting involved in activities that can spark your passion for a certain area.
Assessments such as the MBTI and StrengthsQuest can be useful tools to identify key components that will help you understand how certain interest areas align with your personality, values and overall skill sets. This information will lead you to a better understanding of how you would fit in a certain major or career path.
Once you have identified and clarified your specific career interests, the next step would involve developing, as well as implementing, a plan to not only confirm these professional goals, but also begin forging a path to reach them. Advisors and mentors can be key stakeholders in helping you formulate an effective plan while assisting you with putting that plan in to motion.
SECOND YEAR: Experiential learning, building and leveraging relationships
Once you have identified your key areas of interest, the best way to confirm your passion is to experience it yourself or immerse yourself in the industry. These types of experiences can range from shadowing a professional in your field to doing research or participating in an internship. The relationships you build through internships can be long-lasting, as you never know where your career will take you and when you will cross paths again. This is why maintaining relationship is so key in your journey; your path may lead you back to such key stakeholders, and you want to make sure that the bridge is not burnt, but solidified enough to revisit.
A good way to maintain relationships is to first send thank you letters or emails after interning or working for an organization. You can also look to maintain the relationship by periodically keeping in touch or using social media strategically through LinkedIn.
You can also immerse yourself in an industry by participating in projects, inside and outside the classroom, that focus on particular topics or require the use of skills needed in the career field. For example, if you are a computer science major, and you are currently building your own computer or perhaps developing your own app, although these activities were done independently, they are still very valuable to add to your resume or discuss in an interview.
THIRD YEAR: Focusing goals, industry immersion and clarifying interests
After you have immersed yourself in an industry, it is important to reflect back on how these experiences fit in to your goals and overall future interests. Internalizing this information will give you a better handle as to the next steps. For example, if after building your first computer, you have now decided that working with hardware is more desirable than dealing with the software side of computer science. Knowing this information would then lead you to doing a more targeted search for an internship that incorporates this type of on-the-job tasks.
It is also important to ask yourself the right questions. If, for example, you did not enjoy your internship experience, you should then ask yourself “Why did you not enjoy it?” or “Were there aspects that you did enjoy, and, are there other ways to explore those aspects in a different setting?”
FOURTH YEAR: Professional polishing, proactive job search and self-marketing
Through all of these hands-on experiences, you will be able to explore interest areas of your career, but you will also gain skills to help you be a more polished professional upon graduation. By involving yourself in internships, shadowing professionals or even collaborating with faculty on research, you will not only gain industry-specific knowledge, but also receive coaching and mentorship.
Having these professional soft skills will enable you to take on a proactive job search, as you will be able to reach out to organizations and network with professionals in your field. Experience is important, but understanding the value of the experience and being able to articulate that back to a wide range of audiences, including employers, is what a coach would call his “secret play.”
Knowing these things early on in your undergraduate journey will allow you to formulate a strategic game plan for success. Just like you need an instruction manual to build your Ikea furniture, your career game plan will help you build your future on a solid, lasting foundation.
