Career Research

All the students moving ahead of their graduation need to be prepared with adequate Career Research with a career planner or search related to all the available options for their future Career Research project. Prudent and sensible individuals are the once who look forward to this progression in early career days as a career fresher.

Schoolanduniversity.com understands that finding an appropriate career advisor is so very much difficult and also the importance of career planning; hence the experienced and dedicated experts at schoolanduniversity.com have compiled a Career Research article which helps you with some handy tips about conducting Career Research. One can consider it to be a Career Research worksheet or may be a career advice questionnaire.

1. General know how

A. Stream statistics:
Basic helpful information would be regarding where have the other graduates from your class/year/stream joined and what is it exactly that they are doing? Seek details on the classmates/graduates who were been mentored by your supervisors because they also can help you show correct career path. Graduates; senior to you are of high importance as they are the kind of bridge between you and the past seniors who have been able to establish themselves in their careers so far. Your immediate supervisors are also of great help as they can guide/advise you on suggested career paths and the career paths chosen by the past students under their supervision.

B. Scholarly associations:
One can seek information on career alternates in a particular stream through Scholarly association’s web site. Such web sites are often happy to discuss the queries or career related issues vide e-mail or chat rooms.

C. Career workshops at professional meetings:
Individuals have the benefit to attend Career workshops arranged by these associations in the early days of graduation; leaving you with ample time to decide on the next course of action.

Once the alternatives are listed down; comes the next step in Career Research for students and that is of playing mock role with your own self. Visualize yourself performing in each career considering both the positive and negative aspects of each option. Such mental pictures will help the option look familiar helping you to not get rejected due to the strangeness of the option. At times it also happens that post a second thought you come up with an option that is out of your academic league and this is the situation where one needs to play safe and wise to look for a supervisor who is resourceful enough with context to the field you wish to work.

2. Information – Facts and figures for each Option

Facts and figures about anything and everything play a major role in the success story of any selected option. Occupational tasks such as work profile, educational requirements, position, location, wages and many more are to be scrutinized thoroughly and this can be done only with accurate and appropriate facts and figures only. Collecting facts and figures can be an interesting task and availability is from different sources as listed below:

A. Professional websites and Interviews:
Initial source of information can be a professional website followed by an interview; as nearly all the websites publish the profile related details on their websites and detailed description is available during the interview process. This also happens to be a source of Online Career path. This proves to be an inception of Post graduate career opportunities.

B. Career oriented professionals:
Communicate more with people who are really serious and stable in their careers will update you with better insight of the occupation you are wooing. Best part about such interactions is that post graduate career advice provides you with actual practices of an occupation providing you the pros and cons at its best; most of the times. However; it is important to consider views from different individuals from the same profession or position because this helps resolve or understand the glass half filed half empty theory in a better perspective. Prior preparedness in such interactive sessions will help a lot in terms of your queries such as

What satisfies you the most about your career or occupation? Why?
What frustrates you the most about your career or occupation? Why?
What are the recommended changes; if one could?
Has your career planning affected your personal life? How?
Most challenging aspect of your job?
What is it different that successful do; other than who fail at this job?
Suggested recommendation of a different individual on views of the same career?

The best career advice from our team of experts “Negative and positive aspects carry are equally important for reviewing any particular occupation or profile”. The interaction has to be precise and crisp followed by a thank you and appreciation on the valued time & opinion shared by the individual; at the end of the conversation.

C. Walk the Talk:
Self assessment post a valid self experience to a job role or profile proves to be the best way to gather grass root level information. Some very popular ways of getting self experience are:

Assisting some professional for few days in order to know the requirements of the profile/occupation.
Summer jobs or part time assignments also prove helpful.
Internship serves better; in case there are no time constrains.

Winning over the hurdles to get relevant experience of the profession is worth investing. You may be looking for careers fresh market or careers fresh easy; during this tenure there are chances that one develops contacts in the job market which prove beneficial in a longer run.

D. Print Media and Online Career Research:
Media, may it be print or electronic; has been actively instrumental in the ever evolving job markets. Printed and online information is readily available at different student development and educational portals. Public libraries and career centres play vital role in providing such information. Such sources are the ones which share valuable directions in exploring strategies for better career options. Labour market trends tend to change dynamically and hence a thoughtful approach to such details is mandatory.

3. Skill Requirement or Career builder

The facts and figures gathered from different sources that we discussed in the above topic should help an individual to look out for exact skills required for the kind of job profile you want as a post graduate career option. For instance if one is interested to build up a career in Business management, Business administration, Business administration in Finance or IT management, read through the resumes and publication records of the individuals who have been hired in the recent past for the position you desire and that too in the departments you would want to work.

Schoolanduniversity.com tries to assist post graduate career seekers as a career center and provides the list of skills required by any individual to be professionally successful; based on vast research and surveys:

Common sense
Integrity
Initiative
Adaptability
Intelligence
Oral communication skills
Interpersonal Skills
Problem–solving abilities
Ability to get things done
Dependability
Well–developed Work Habits
Enthusiasm
Motivation to achieve

For some post graduate career seekers who have pre planned to succeed; the above skills list would resemble a lot with what one used to do to achieve the perfect academics. Growing further in the profession will required enhanced and different skill set; but the basics will always remain same.

Supervision
Budgeting
Coping with deadline pressures
Public relations
Negotiating
Teaching – Downloading.

Post graduates who have worked on enhancing these skills while their graduation period feel privileged once they enter the job market; simultaneously a constant effort of converting the graduate experience in a form where the future employer can co relate it with the organizational needs. Some good examples could be where graduate students can supervise undergraduate Business administration student’s projects, exam papers and such segments, which; eventually can be added up as supervisory experience to future employers. Crystal clear understanding of the vocabulary and specially the culture helps an individual to considerably convert graduate experience in relevant organizational needs.

4. Short listing the Options

Start short listing the compiled list and bring down the choices to may be five to seven career options which you are really interested to explore further. Criteria which are on priority for you such as Income, Job Security, Social value etc should be used to curb down the count of options.

5. Decision making

The first step in decision making is to decide what is to be decided...Confusing? The process also is this confusing. General tendency is to have maximum available options and more and more things to be worked out while you move ahead.

Individuals who are not able to decide even after serious efforts or are in their early years of graduation they should give some more time to try things to select one of it or may be put in extra time and efforts to take a taste of all and then decide on to the final career option.

6. Checks and balances:

Any decision or strategy or plans put in action not only in Career planning, elsewhere also; is likely to succeed only with checks and balances in form of regular reviewing the action plan; followed by a decision to plan something more towards the journey to success. Reviewing your decision at regular intervals will give you the chance to opt for alternatives which might be more beneficial based on relevant experience and information gathered.

Irrespective of the decision making or reviewing process; an individual should stay on alert with the following set of queries:

How will I benefit optimum of this career choice?
What price am I paying to opt for this career choice?
Considering my positives and negatives what chances do i stand to get this career choice?
How does my selected option stand the comparison with other career options?

In process of seeking information from experienced personnel about post graduate careers; make sure to not to get over influenced by their thought process of what they think is best for you. Equip yourself and do your own Career forecast.

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