Portfolio

Career Exploration – Research into the Unknown

Many of you probably have at least an idea of the career field you are interested in — engineering, business, architecture, interior design, construction, auto mechanics, computer programming — but few of you probably know the necessary steps it takes to be employed in one of these career fields.

Obviously education plays a major role in securing your dream job, but before you pack your bags, squeeze your parents for spending money, and breathe the sweet taste of college freedom, you should know what lies ahead of you.



First Years – Dream Job

Review your Career Exploration Intro, paying particular attention to the reflection after you read about the career field you are interested in.

Next, search for major employers in the career field you are interested in such as Boeing, Apple, or Microsoft. Think big — dream big. If you don't know of companies in your career field, you will need to search for employers first. Monster.com might be a good starting point.

Don't worry if you struggle with figuring out a specific job you want — browse through job listings for a company you are interested in and read up on the job description. Choose one that sounds like something you might want to do, but keep in mind that this doesn't have to be set in stone — this is, after all, career exploration.

Another good website to check out: CIS Some of you may have already seen this site, but it's loaded with great information on colleges and careers. USER NAME: crater PASSWORD: comets

Requirements

Once you find a company and a job position that interests you, research and record the following in a Word document for a page in your portfolio:

  1. Why are you interested in this particular career and why do you think the company is a good fit for you?
    • Aim high — If you want to become an engineer, what company would you want to work for? Boeing? Disney?
  2. Write a basic description of the company - many times this information can be found in the Investor Relations section of their website.
    1. Include the mission or vision statement of the company
    2. Include a brief history of the company:
      • When the company was founded
      • Who started the company
      • Include unique facts that pertain to the development or success of the company
  3. Include a brief description of the service or product the company provides
    • If the company provides mutliple services or products, describe the most important or most profitable
    • Include examples of the product or service (images)
  4. Write a description of the job position
    • Include the function this position provides within the comany
    • Include the education/training/experience required for the position
    • Include the starting salary and benefits offered for the position
  5. Compare your dream job to a similar job of a competing company
    • Include a comparison of the services/products
    • Include a comparison of salary/benefits
    • Include a comparison of job responsiblities/description

Save as career_exploration in your Integrated Lit Trimester 1 folder


Second Years – Two Options

Since you've done this nifty little research piece last year, you have two options:

Option 1 – Plans Change

We recognize people change their minds, often frequently as they grow older. So if your career interests have changed in the last year, we would like you to do the Dream Job research to reflect the change in interest.

Obviously this could leave you with an opportunity to "get ahead" so you can do more important things such as watching You Tube videos or playing Minecraft, but let us remind you, we still have your career research linked up from last year and we will check to see if you've done some "creative finagling."

Option 2 – A Day in the Life of...

Most of you have a dream, a vision about what your future job will be like. But it's not all corporate retreats and year–end bonuses. What does an engineer do everyday? How many hours does a lawyer put in a week? What kinds of people will you deal with everyday?

This is a connect–the–dot assignment, placing you inside the lines of your future dream job.

Requirements and Parameters

This is going to be one of those assignments that is essentially wide open and maybe even a bit vague. Since most of you have diverse ambitions, it's difficult to create specific requirements and resources to fit everyone.

With that being said, here are a few tips to help you get started:

  1. The end product is a device of your own creation. We say that with much hope and trepidation. Hope that it allows you some creative freedom to do something really cool and will blow us away. Trepidation in that you take the easy way out and produce something of non–BIS caliber – in other words, it's lame.
    • Some ideas here include: a narrative, a comic book, a newspaper article, a children's informational book, an instructional video, a Wikipedia article, possiblities, possibilities.
    • Keep in mind, whatever you do, it must have the look and feel of the concept, so a newspaper article should look like an article in a newspaper, and so on.
  2. You must capture what a typical person might experience in the job. This should include the basic responsiblities associated with the job, challenges, and types of people you deal with. If someone you knew ten years ago in high school came up to you and asked you about your job, what would you tell them?
  3. You must be accurate. For some, research for this assignment will be fairly straight forward – thank you Google – but for others, research will be a challenge and may require you to think outside the box, and by box, I mean the Google search box.
  4. If it's a written piece, you must write at least 1 page
    • Consider this: internship experience, interview someone, do a job shadow for a day.

Save as "a_day_in_the_life_of" in your Integrated Lit Trimester II folder