Category Archives: career choices

Do I Need to Have A Career Plan in High School?

Posted on June 17, 2014 | 2 comments

dream-job-nextexitThe old saying “what you don’t know won’t hurt you” means if you do not know about a problem, you will not be able to make yourself unhappy by worrying about it. That belief is supported by the belief “ignorance is bliss“.

When it comes to creating/having a career plan, focusing on it (worrying about it) will actually create a great deal of happiness, help you avoid major stress and save you (and/or your parents) thousands of dollars. Based on almost daily news, the amount of college loan debt has escalated to levels considered very dangerous for our economy and for individuals. Having excessive education loan debt is a personal accountability issue – not a national economy issue.

How much debt do you want or plan to have when you graduate college? According to an article in the Huffington Post, “the average college graduate obtained a degree in 2012 with $29,400 in student debt, up from $18,750 less than a decade before in 2004, according to a new report.” To avoid unnecessary costs (which frequently ends up becoming debt) during college, avoid changing majors and choose the right college or university for you. If you are unsure about a career direction and go into college as an “undeclared major” you are likely to not have any revelations about a career direction by the end of your Freshman year. Whether you put it off or tackle career planning in high school, the only way to avoid unnecessary expense and find true happiness is to do the career planning work.

So, the short answer to the question, Do I Need to Have a Career Plan in High School?, is that you need to be doing the work of creating a career plan. The Career Coaching for Students™ program looks at this work as developing Decision Making skills. Decision making is a recognized skill of highly successful people and happens to be one of the weakest skills for incoming Freshman in college. You don’t necessarily need to have made a career decision but you need to be well on your way to identifying and understanding your career interests and the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats associated with your career interests.

A career plan is the reward for the work you’ll do to determine your skills and interests, what career best suits your talents, and what skills and training you need for your chosen career.

By developing a career plan, you can focus on what you want to do and how to get there without worrying and without unnecessary expense. To do this well, you must start with a “professional-grade assessment” that helps you understand your personality strengths. Career planning is only one benefit of using assessments to become much more self-aware.  You’ll also find you will have a better understanding of your skills and experiences to discuss with potential employers (on your resume and in future interviews).

To eventually have a defined career goal, get started now.

A career goal can be a specific job you want to do — such as doctor or teacher — or be a particular field you want to work in, such as medicine or education.

Rather than limiting your future, a career goal may help you discover career possibilities you wouldn’t have thought of otherwise. There are several job possibilities with any chosen career. For instance, if you choose a medical career, you may want to be a scientist, a nurse, or a doctor.

A career goal can also guide you into doing what you want with your life.

  1. Become Self-Aware.
  2. Identify Career Interests.
  3. Narrow your career interests to a top two or three.
  4. Determine what you need to do to prepare for your chosen career.
  5. Besides the right college major, do you need special training? Some careers need the specialized training but don’t require a college degree. If so, find out what schools offer the training you need. Also, determine what kind of experience will you need to be successful in the career. Consider an internship as a way to get work experience in the career field.
  6. Write your career plan.  Use online tools to help you create a visual career plan.

Carl Nielson is Chief Discovery Officer of Success Discoveries and Managing Principal of The Nielson Group, an organizational development consulting firm serving Fortune 100 company clients. As creator of the Career Coaching for Students program for high school students and Career and Success Skills Mastery for College Students and Recent Grads, Carl and his team of licensed facilitators across North America have helped thousands of students find a better way through a career exploration process that works.  Self-directed assessment and career exploration coaching packages start at $399. Local public workshops, distance-coaching and in-school programs available. Call for more information at 972.346.2892.

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Posted in best career, career choices, career exploration, Career Exploration and Career Coaching, career interest, career options, career test, Choose a major, Find a Major, student career counseling, Student Career Exploration, Student soft skill development, Teen Career Exploration

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This Is Your Time

Posted on January 14, 2014 | Leave a comment

dream-job-nextexitThe world of work is Darwin at its’ best…survival of the fittest. Ask any recent college grad or professionals that have lost their job within the last 6 or 7 years. As a student career coach (and in adult coaching sometimes as well), most high school students and many college students are challenged to engage in researching and planning for their future. For some, lack of confidence or fear makes the entire idea of investigating and planning for a future to be very intimidating. I use the following questions when I see a person struggling to engage or seems to have a lack of confidence:

Low level of confidence/lack of engagement

  1. What makes you think this isn’t the best time to do career exploration and planning?
  2. What makes you think that you have a low confidence level?
  3. What do you want to do about it? Something? Nothing?
  4. If you are not going to do something about it, who will?
  5. If you are going to do something about it, how will that help you reach your goal?
  6. What are your goals?

Help for those that don’t know what they want to do

  1. Know that a goal without a plan is merely a dream. Dreams rarely become reality. Plans almost always become reality.
  2. What DON’T you want to do? There may be options or a “plan B” that others are suggesting you pursue. Think with integrity about what you don’t want to do. Own it. Move on.
  3. Examine the current job market supply-and-demand ratios. Within Student Resource Central, we offer several excellent career research sites that provide quick information about high growth jobs and industries.
  4. How does your current interests and background fit with these ratios. Use assessments (for high school students or for college students) to provide a more structured and valid approach to examining your interests and “fit” to different career possibilities.
  5. Choose a career field to research – research it thoroughly. You aren’t making a decision here, just research.
  6. How can you gain more insight (talk to people in the career) and experience (internships) to further investigate the career of interest?

It should be reinforced that even if a student does everything above (as well as much more) there is no guarantee of employment today or tomorrow. Be prepared to reexamine and reinvent as you walk the path.

Carl Nielson is Chief Discovery Officer of Success Discoveries and Managing Principal of The Nielson Group, an organizational development consulting firm that provides executive development coaching, team development and assessments for hiring. As creator of the Career Coaching for Students program for high school students and Career and Success Skills Mastery for College Students and Recent Grads, Carl and his team of licensed facilitators across North America have helped thousands of students find a better way through a career exploration process that works.  Assessment and coaching packages start at $399. Local public workshops, distance-coaching and in-school programs available. Call for more information at 972.346.2892.

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Why a Double Major is Extremely Valuable

Posted on November 27, 2013 | Leave a comment

When it comes to education strategy, looking at career interests is always first. Then look at the career’s educational requirements and talk to people in the career for additional insight. Find out what education will make you the most attractive to employers for the career you are most interest in pursuing. Students who graduate with a double major tend to be more attractive than students with a single major and those with a major/minor combination.

StudentBookStackTo be fair, there are some careers that require a labor-intensive college degree such as nursing, engineering and possibly business. Double majoring for those may be difficult or impossible. Declaring these majors up front through your college admissions application will likely block any consideration of a double degree going in. Also, pursuing two majors from two different colleges will have its challenges as well. The more academic overlap between the two majors, the less course hours you’ll have to complete.

However, putting aside the labor-intensive degrees, all others are ideally suited for anyone to obtain a double degree in four years. So here is a short list of reasons why you should double major:

  • If you plan from the beginning (starting in high school), you’ll find college academic planning for a double major will result in no or very little additional coursework
  • A double major expands your opportunity to “find” a specific career direction within a general career direction
  • A double major is more attractive to employers. It shows diversity of interests and knowledge and shows you are not one to do the minimum amount of work
  • A double major will very likely set you up for more rapid advancement once you are working
  • If you do decide to change your career direction, a double major has positioned you to make the least amount of academic changes

SCHOOL COUNSELORSThere are some watch-outs when considering a double major:

  • Internships are practically a must – more valuable than a double major. So don’t think a double major gives you the freedom to relax about internships. Keep your GPA above 3.0 and you’ll likely be attractive to internship providers after four semesters. You must pursue internships, they won’t pursue you.
  • Don’t avoid labor-intensive courses. Most double majors won’t kill you. The tendency to select courses that require minimum work out of a fear of being overloaded is a bad strategy. Pick courses that you feel will be best for your career, without consideration of the amount of work. Some semesters will be harder than others but they won’t all be hard.
  • Some universities have a special honors/scholars program for incoming Freshman within specific colleges, but especially the humanities. Apply for these and discuss their fit to your goal of completing a double major within four years. As many students have stated about these programs, “the scholars program was a GPA buster but well worth it for what I gained“. OK, so instead of a 4.0 for those four classes over two semesters, you received a 3.8. Employers won’t care about the GPA impact but they will be impressed with a double major and scholars program recipient.

dream-job-nextexitIf you are considering a double major, the time to decide is between your senior year of high school and the end of your Freshman year of college.

Ideally, going in with the decision already made will enable you to assert your desires on your academic advisers from the beginning. But to do that means you’ve really done your work to flush out career interests. Some universities embrace and encourage double majors and some do not. For some, they won’t let you declare the second major until your sophomore year. The greater the clarity you have at the beginning, the better your questions and decisions as you step through the college selection and enrollment process as well.

Carl Nielson is Chief Discovery Officer of Success Discoveries and Managing Principal of The Nielson Group, an organizational development consulting firm that provides executive development coaching, team development and assessments for hiring. As creator of the Career Coaching for Students program for high school students and Career and Success Skills Mastery for College Students and Recent Grads, Carl and his team of licensed facilitators across North America have helped thousands of students find a better way through a career exploration process that works.  Assessment and coaching packages start at $399. Local public workshops, distance-coaching and in-school programs available. Call for more information at 972.346.2892.

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Posted in career choices, career interest, Choose a college, Choose a major, Find a Major, summer internships

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3-D Printing to Energize Student Pursuit of STEM Careers

Posted on August 23, 2013 | Leave a comment

3D Race Car Microscopic SizeIn March 2013, Harvard Business Review published an article, 3-D Printing Will Change the World. The author, Richard D’Aveni states, “It is a small evolutionary step from spraying toner on paper to putting down layers of something more substantial (such as plastic resin) until the layers add up to an object. And yet, by enabling a machine to produce objects of any shape, on the spot and as needed, 3-D printing really is ushering in a new era.” His article focuses on world markets, the balance of trade among countries and the impact that 3-D printing will have on the China-USA trade imbalance. It certainly looks like many good things will come from the invention of 3-D printing.

The most exciting part of the 3-D printer revolution for me is the impact it will have in our schools, especially in the STEM fields. Students will be able to learn and create new things with the help of 3D printers – at a much faster pace that is more aligned with the speed of information gathering in the Internet era. Using physics, math, and engineering, students can use 3D printers as high-speed feedback tools for their learning. Not only will it help them grasp the fundamental principles of the sciences with greater speed, it will engage the creativity of students like nothing before.

A 3-D printed Jumbo jet? TEDTALK

3D printers appear to have great potential for changing how students can experiment with creating things. Jason Krueger, blogger and founder of StratoStar, a site dedicated to STEM projects for students, states [With 3-D printing,] “today’s students are in a prime stage in scientific and technological development.”

The Motley Fool Report about 3D Printing

Stay tuned on this one. The 3D printer revolution will draw more students into STEM-related fields which is sure to be a great thing. This is where the Apple marketing model of making the product affordable for schools to purchase will be critical in giving U.S. students a competitive edge.

Carl Nielson is Chief Discovery Officer of Success Discoveries and Managing Principal of The Nielson Group, an organizational development consulting firm that provides executive development coaching, team development and assessments for hiring. As creator of the Career Coaching for Students program for high school students and Career and Success Skills Mastery for College Students and Recent Grads, Carl has helped thousands of students find a better way through the career exploration process that works.  Assessment and coaching packages start at $349 – checkout the Summer 2013 special offer – 30-days coaching support with the Home Study student career coaching package. Summer special ends August 31, 2013.

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Higher Education Career Services Must Die

Posted on July 23, 2013 | Leave a comment

Better Career Planning Better LifeOn May 15, 2013, Allie Grasgreen published an article on Inside Higher Ed based on Andy Chan’s report “A Roadmap for Transforming the College-to-Career Experience“. That article is referenced here as a foundation for my thoughts offered at the end.

In an interview, Andy Chan starts by saying, “Well, not die, exactly. Transform. The term ‘career services’ has been a phrase that has been used for several decades to describe what colleges have been doing,” says Andy Chan, vice president for personal and career development at Wake Forest University. “It’s not working.”Chan co-edited the new report, “A Roadmap for Transforming the College-to-Career Experience.”“I’m being a little bit dramatic by saying it must die,” Chan says in an interview. “It’s just that that traditional model needs to be totally rethought and resurrected as something different.”

Currently, half-a-dozen — or maybe a dozen, if it’s a big university — overbooked counselors sit in an office and advise students who waited until their senior year to think about how they’re going to get a job. They work alone, independently, one office of many with a given student affairs niche to fill. They counsel and host job fairs and help students network — but only for the students who show up to get help.

“It ends up just being treated as an office that’s one of dozens that performs a specific service,” Chan says, “when in the students’ mind it’s one of the most important questions they have when they come to the school.”

The Higher Ed Roadmap for Transforming the College-to-Career Experience

  1. Develop a Bold Vision and Mission for Personal Career Development
  2. Secure Backing from Institutional Leadership
  3. Strategically Position the Personal and Career Development Leadership Role
  4. Strategically Transform, Build and Align Personal and Career Development Organization and Staff
  5. Gather and Report Personal and Career Development Outcome Data to all Constituents
  6. Engage and Equip a College-to-Career Community of Influencers with a Focus on Faculty and Parents

The transformed model has more staff – plus faculty members and administrators – working together to reach out to all students, from Day One. They work on career counseling and employer and alumni relations, network development and professional development. Their mission squares with the institution’s mission: they provide “personal and career development” to build lifetime employability. They are also a crucial unit of the college and are housed accordingly — under a major administrator.

They gather and report personal and career development outcome data, which they publicize to all stakeholders to make a case supporting the value of higher education and the liberal arts. And they engage with faculty, parents, alumni and employers to build a network of “influencers” to provide help along the way.

“If you take the traditional idea of ‘career services’ and throw it out,” Chan says, “you can come up with a model where the institution is taking responsibility and being accountable for teaching students how to live meaningful, purposeful, successful lives.”

“What we’re pressed to do,” says Kelley Bishop, an assistant vice president of strategic initiatives at Michigan State University whose work is featured in the report, “is embed the career development process into the academic experience. That is the crux of our challenge for our profession for the next decade.”A critical component of this approach is data-gathering. Many colleges, for whatever reason, just aren’t good at tracking and reporting graduates’ career outcomes. That lack of information leads people to decide that colleges – particularly liberal arts ones – aren’t making good on their promise to get graduates gainfully employed, even though that may not be true.

“To the extent that they’re paying attention to their students’ needs and the realities of the world of work today, I think many of them will say this is bold, but it’s the kind of thing that we need to be thinking about if we want to justify the value of higher education,” Chan says. “There are a lot of issues around trying to manage costs, which I completely understand, but the flip side of that question is, how do we continue to create and justify value that matters to our students?”

The report cites research from Michigan State’s Collegiate Employment Research Institute. A survey of more than 800 employers found that the people hiring (or turning down) liberal arts students for jobs believe those recent graduates are equipped with the work place competencies they need, but were not able to articulate and demonstrate their abilities in job interviews, and did not learn several key technical and professional skills that are highly valued by employers. The report lays this problem at the feet of the universities.

“When we think about how dramatically the world of work has changed, it is remarkable that the methods utilized to prepare students to enter the world of work have remained static,” the report reads. And though the methods may be static, the resources aren’t: colleges slashed career office budgets by an average of 16 percent this past year, the report says.

And there are costs – in time and money — associated with this change.

At Michigan State, Bishop started forming a new “distributive approach” in 2001. Under that model, career services is still decentralized, in a way, as it is at most large universities. Typically, a university will have a very small office, perhaps just one person, at each school or college, but there is little if any coordination between them. At Michigan State, there are three main hubs whose staff are closely connected (or even reside) with those schools. They coordinate the college’s goals and agenda with the main center offices, embedding career development into the curriculum and helping to build students’ professional identity from the get-go.

Michigan State has overcome the traditional model’s challenge of getting students to use its services by taking the services to the students – and it increased demand so much that strains are emerging. At some point, the existing staff members won’t be able to personally handle 50,000 students. So they’re going to have to rethink how they allocate resources and work with third parties. The “everything you need is here; come get it” approach is not going to fly anymore with new generations of students who expected everything to be taken care of for them, Bishop said.

“What we now set in motion, we need to reinvest,” he says. “We’re not going to pull back at this point…. This is where the scrutiny of higher education is coming — what is the return on this investment?”

The report calls for bold change; change that could take decades. But Chan believes colleges are ready for it.

“I think given my conversations with many schools that this is something that many people would say, this should have happened a long time ago,” he says – and students and alumni might agree. “I think they’ll be pleased.” Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/05/15/career-services-it-now-exists-must-die-new-report-argues#ixzz2Zszxs9i7

The excerpt above included a few key points which I highlighted. What is missing from the “solution” is student-focused design and a recognition of the need to go outside, to outsource either the content development and delivery or the career coaching or both. In manufacturing, we see top performing companies outsourcing the design, development and production of sub-components that are brought into the final manufacturing process at the right time. Critical elements like quality and customized requirements are managed in a partnership with the supplier. Universities are still thinking “if it wasn’t developed here it isn’t going to meet our needs”. Manufacturers source suppliers and then partner to ensure the supplier will be successful in meeting their unique needs. The current reality is that home grown Higher Ed career counseling programs are the standard, and for the most part, inferior to what 3rd party programs such as Career Coaching for Students’ Career and Success Skills Master for College Students and Recent Grads offers. A better higher ed career development model that is ready to implement now might look like this:
Higher Ed Career Development Strategy from DOC

Until higher ed catches up, the good news is that college students (and high school students) can receive a best-in-class program at Career Coaching for Students.
Carl Nielson is Chief Discovery Officer of Success Discoveries and Managing Principal of The Nielson Group, an organizational development consulting firm that provides executive development coaching, team development and assessments for hiring. As creator of the Career Coaching for Students program for high school students and Career and Success Skills Mastery for College Students and Recent Grads, Carl has helped thousands of students find a better way through the career exploration process that works.  Assessment and coaching packages start at $349 – checkout the Summer 2013 special offer – 30-days coaching support with the Home Study student career coaching package. Summer special ends August 31, 2013

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Posted in career choices, career exploration, Career Exploration and Career Coaching, Choose a college, Choose a major, Student Career Exploration, Student soft skill development, Uncategorized

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I Want to Quit (My Career)

Posted on July 9, 2013 | Leave a comment

Talent Management MagazineThe July 2013 issue of Talent Management Magazine, a respected journal for human resources executives, highlighted some new statistics that reinforce what I’ve been trying to communicate to parents, high school administrators and college and university career centers for some time now – “what you are doing isn’t working!”

Here are excerpts from the article…you be the judge

First there was the Gallup survey that came out in early June 2013, which found the majority of American employees (70 percent) were either not engaged or actively disengaged with their work.

As if that wasn’t enough to raise red flags for employers who care about and are tracking employee engagement, a new Harris survey for the University of Phoenix in Arizona that was released July 8, 2013 showed that more than half of U.S. employees want to change not only their jobs, but their careers.

Apparently, only 14 percent of workers say they’re in their dream careers.

Some of you may not be surprised to learn this feeling is more pronounced among workers in their 20’s (80 percent), but it’s certainly not specific to this demographic alone: Sixty-four percent of those in their 30s want to change careers and 54 percent of those in their 40s reported the same.

Is this the classic “grass is greener on the other side” syndrome? Maybe. Or perhaps it’s the fact that the unstable economic environment coupled with debilitating student loan debt coerced many graduates to scrounge up any kind of employment they could secure just to have a steady cash inflow. Consider that nearly three-fourths of those surveyed (73 percent) said they didn’t end up with a job they had originally anticipated when they were younger.

And before you go on a rant about how flaky millennials are, you may be surprised to learn that those in the upper echelons of corporate America are among those who want to sign up for a different career. Nearly half (43 percent) of C-level executives said they were somewhat interested in switching careers, while 26 percent expressed a stronger desire to do so.

Offering lateral moves and defining a clear career path for employees might not be the silver bullet when it comes to engagement and retention problems, but it’s a start.

Employers can’t fix this. And then there are high schools and colleges continuing to do the same things they’ve been doing for the past 10+ years, only now the high schools have teacher productivity work flow tools in the cloud (Naviance, XAP, etc.) to help track high school student college readiness tasks.

This is a wake up call. Want to decrease student loan debt? Get smarter about planning career and educational strategies. You can delegate career exploration and career matching to an overworked high school counselor with outdated assessments or delay this work until college where students are going in undeclared, changing majors 3 or 4 times and taking 5 years to graduate at a cost of thousands of extra dollars. Or you can take a proactive approach and do something different.

Better Career Planning Better Lifehttp://www.careercoachingforstudents.net

Carl Nielson is Chief Discovery Officer of Success Discoveries and Managing Principal of The Nielson Group, an organizational development consulting firm that provides executive development coaching, team development and assessments for hiring. As creator of the Career Coaching for Students program for high school students and Career and Success Skills Mastery for College Students and Recent Grads, Carl has helped thousands of students find a better way through the career exploration process that works.  Assessment and coaching packages start at $349 – checkout the Summer 2013 special offer – 30-days coaching support with the Home Study student career coaching package.

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Posted in ACT Test, career choices, career exploration, Career Exploration and Career Coaching, career interest, career options, career quiz, career test, Choose a college, Choose a major, college and career readiness, College Application Essay, College Search Tool, Find a Major, SAT Test, student career counseling, Student Career Exploration, Student soft skill development, Teen Career Exploration, Test Prep

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7 Myths About Career Exploration in High School

Posted on June 23, 2013 | 2 comments

5 Myths about Career Exploration blog picAround 2004, as a parent with kids approaching high school, I found myself curious about the “state-of-the-art” in career exploration and coaching that the students would receive. As a corporate organizational development consultant and executive coach, focusing mainly on adults either in career transition or executive/high-potential development, I had some insight into “talent” and success in life and work.

My adult clients would ask me to coach their “graduating senior in college” who hadn’t figured out what they wanted to do with their life. That was a warning sign to me – not about the person but about the system. How could a student go all through high school, choose a major, complete an undergraduate degree in college and not have a clue about what they wanted to do? What was the root cause of the failure? What was being done to help students and why was it not working?

Fast forward to 2013, and nothing has changed. Students continue to struggle with who they are and how their personal talent design connects to career choices and educational strategy. In some ways, it comes down to something even broader – learning how to make big decisions. But I am finding the same assessments used in 2004 are being used today. And schools are letting technology deliver career coaching.

Based on what I am seeing and hearing from school administrators, parents and students, I’ve put together a list of myths that are in desperate need of being corrected. These myths are prevalent with teachers, counselors, school boards and parents. See if you carry some of these myths as your own beliefs:

  • Myth #1 The high school has this covered. They’d like you to believe they’ve got career exploration covered. Even community colleges and universities want you to think they’ve got it covered. Be wary of the high school’s use of buzz words and descriptions of programs. For example, “all students take one or more career assessments to help them identify careers” may be technically true as a task they have the students complete. Ask your son or daughter what they thought of the assessment results. Ask them to show you the report. Ask them how the results are being used and what are they doing for career exploration. And for the bottom line question, ask them if they feel they are getting appropriate and tangible support for identifying and evaluating personal career options.
  • Myth #2 The assessments used by your high school are valid and insightful. The best way to check this myth is to take the assessments yourself and check your reaction to the report. As for technical information about the validity and reliability of the assessments, the school’s website will point you to the organization’s website that produces the assessments. With a little digging, you’ll find some kind of statement about validity and reliability. Some assessment companies will actually state “this type of assessment does not fit the criteria for validity and reliability studies”.  Taking the assessments yourself will surely enlighten you to the horribly designed assessment that is expected to “tell” your student which careers will be best for them. But even if you were to accept the quality of instrument as credible, what insights has it produced for the student?  What insights has the student learned about themselves after taking the assessment?
  • Myth #3 Counselors and teachers are focused on this. Ask a counselor about the amount of time they focus on coaching students in making career decisions and they will start explaining (after they stop laughing) how their day, week and semester is spent. It isn’t focused on coaching students in career decisions. Some counselors are leaving schools because their job isn’t about helping students, its about pushing paper.
  • Myth #4 The paid-with-tax-dollars school-site subscription to a cloud-based software program (Naviance, XAP, etc.)  is focused on helping the student find their path in life. Actually, many of these site-licensed “portals” are administrative tracking systems to help teachers be more productive. It is possible they also help students to be more productive with the college application process too. However, the primary focus isn’t on helping a student gain insight into who they are and what they want to become (even though the web-based marketing lingo sounds like they do focus on this). These systems are more focused on workflow management, specifically, “the process of getting students into college”. Who cares if the reason they are going to college is faulty or once they get there they change majors 3 times and graduate in 5 years. Put the ladder on the wrong building and you get to the top of a building with no purpose for being there.
  • Myth #5 High school students are too young and immature to focus much on career exploration or make any kind of career choice. This one is mostly on the parents. All I can tell you is if you think this, you are wrong. I am consistently amazed at the level of engagement and deep thinking that students put into developing a future direction, career exploration, choosing a major, choosing the right college for what they want to do and setting goals for themselves. Even those students that start the Career Coaching for Students program with less maturity quickly shed that cover and engage effectively. Watch for the colleges and universities to  empathize with the “high school is too early to know what you want to do with the rest of your life” thinking. The standard language at on-campus college visit presentations is to tell the student and parents it is perfectly fine to come in “undeclared” and take a year or two to decide what to study. Sure, you can start taking the “required Freshman classes” and a few electives to see what floats your boat. In the meantime, some students are figuring out a lot while still in high school and walking into college with a clear plan that may include double majoring, targeting specific companies for internships and obtaining summer jobs that will give them experience that makes them a top prospect upon graduation. In the meantime, being undeclared seems like a slow path to nowhere, and let’s not to mention the extra expense (thousands of dollars) for changing majors and extending the college stay by just one semester. Oops, I guess I did.
  • Myth #6 High achieving students don’t need as much career exploration support. One of the most challenging (and exciting) situations in coaching students is when the student is “All American” (or “All Canadian” for my Canadian readers). You know the type – very high GPA, active in sports, band, club officer, outside activities, loved by the teachers, respected by the administration, etc.).  The fact that these special individuals have so many capabilities, they have the most choices available to them. Many of these report feeling that they are expected to just know some how what they are going to do. The pressure to have a career direction figured out “on their own” is tremendous. From where I sit, there is no class of students that holds some special psychic ability to know what they want to do. All groups of students from under-achievers to over-achievers need professional career coaching.
  • Myth #7 Career exploration and planning is a “nice to have” but not the primary purpose of high school so it doesn’t deserve the funding or attention in high school. Many research studies have shown a clear connection between a student’s clarity about their future and their level of engagement in school. The result – higher academic achievement. If a student is under-performing academically, there is a good chance it is because they don’t see the potential in themselves and how that potential relates to a future. Many parents have reported back to me that their son/daughter raised their GPA the very next semester after going through the Career Coaching for Students program. But it doesn’t stop there. Students who were never on the academic honor roll in high school, and went through the Career Coaching for Students program their senior year were found two years later to have been on the Dean’s list at college every semester. The studies say this happens with credible career coaching at the high school level. Our experience is saying the same thing.

Carl Nielson is an organizational development consultant, executive development coach, career coach and author of the Career Coaching for Students program for high school students. For information about career direction and job search coaching for college students, check out Career and Success Skills Mastery for College Students and Recent Grads. Assessment and coaching packages start at $349 – checkout the Summer 2013 special offer.

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Warning: Campus Career Services NOT There to Help Students Choose a Career

Posted on April 5, 2013 | Leave a comment

B-Schools With Career Services That Rock—MaybeBusinessweek conducts a survey of college career centers each year. The way they wrote the article (see link), apparently college campus career services are not expected to assist students in choosing a career. So do you go to academic advising for help? Not really. They refer you over to the career center.

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Excerpt from the Businessweek article:
One of the more perplexing things about business school career services is that student perceptions of how good a job their school is doing often bear no relation to the school’s real-world performance at placing students in high-paying jobs.

But wait, maybe there’s hope
Based on the survey data, students who took the Businessweek survey (summary article at http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-11-13/b-schools-with-career-services-that-rock-maybe) consider career services to be more than just placement and salaries.

In fact, the services include much more, from organizing career events on campus to connecting students with alumni who work in their targeted industries and providing help on job applications and résumés. Students who rate their school’s career services highly—notwithstanding mediocre success in the job market—are effectively giving them an “A” for effort. So if you’re looking for schools where you’ll get lots of help in your job search, consider those on our “best” list—you may not land your dream job, but it won’t be for lack of trying.
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Many career centers offer career counseling. Just keep in mind the “counselor” you are working with may be a grad student who has never had a job outside of the college. Or the counselor’s skill set may be stronger around how to write an effective resume than how to understand your talents and identify careers that are ideally suited to your talent makeup. Even if you are aiming for a business school education, there are many career paths that your education will support that you are less or more suited for talent-wise.

So where does a student go for assistance in choosing a career?

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Countering College Student Objections to Joining LinkedIn

Posted on March 25, 2013 | Leave a comment

LinkedIn5 COLLEGE STUDENT Objections to Joining LinkedIn

While it is true that some college students may be beyond help, below are some excuses you can meet head on. To support students, my connections exceed over 2,000 which connect me to over 17 million on LinkedIn. I use my connections to help both high school and college students find people in their career of interest as part of the Career Coaching for Students program (high school program or college student program).

Your key to success1. “Creating a LinkedIn profile takes too much time” is a common complaint; however, creating a profile is actually a motivational exercise. Students can easily copy and paste their résumé to their LinkedIn profile and revise it from there. Once their profile starts to fill out, they begin to feel better about their developing profile.

2. “I don’t have time to add a LinkedIn update once a week?” Posting an update once a week is not that hard to do. With most students now on Facebook and Twitter, posting an update takes the same effort. It’s as simple as commenting on a topic such as something interesting being covered in a core course that aligns with your career direction, attaching an article, posting a great quote, letting people know what you are up to, etc.

3. “I don’t think people in my occupation use LinkedIn” might have been a valid point two or three years ago. Some occupations, namely the trades, were slower to jump on the LinkedIn wagon. Today, people in all industries and all types of work are on LinkedIn. With the number of connections I have, I love taking friendly bets on this false perception. I’ve won every bet.

4. “There’s no way I can get 50 connections” is an interesting challenge. LinkedIn allows users to download contacts from their e-mail account from the beginning of registering for membership. One just has to select the members they want to invite and soon acceptances and invites will come their way. An exercise I do with high school and college students is to have them write down on a worksheet everyone they know (friends, extended family, parents of friends, professional contacts). I then poll everyone to see how many they wrote down. In a 5 minute time limit, the average student writes down between 30 and 50 names. I then ask them if it is reasonable to expect each person they wrote down to have the same number of contacts. We then do the math. Using the least (30), the math looks like this: 30 x 30 = 900. Each of us can easily get something between our direct contact count and the 900 within one week. For college students, making this a competitive challenge with a reasonable $$ prize for the highest number of contacts after one week generates amazing results.

5. “I’m just a college student.” LinkedIn will most likely not offer immediate gratification. This isn’t a sprint; it is more like a marathon. The smartest students will invest in the time to begin their lifelong network. They’ll be ahead of their classmates and will most likely receive more interviews and offers when the time comes for the payout.

Carl Nielson is an organizational development consultant, professional career and executive/leadership coach and creator of the nationally recognized program Career Coaching for Students™ . Career Coaching for Students is available as a district-wide high school program, college program and in group and on-one-one offerings through certified career coaches throughout the United States, Canada and other countries. Contact Carl Nielson at carl@successdiscoveries.com or call 972-346-2892 to discuss specific needs. Or visit us at http://www.careercoachingforstudents.net

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Job Hunting in the 21st Century for Students and recent College Grads

Posted on January 27, 2013 | 3 comments

Forbes The ConnectorFor some time now, I’ve watched the number of college students graduating without a job go to unacceptable levels. We can blame the economy of course. But how does that explain that some students are getting jobs. And these are graduating seniors with GPA or class standing all over the board. In fact, there are some graduating seniors with extremely high GPAs being passed over for others with a substantially lower GPA. The solution is more complex than any one thing. The economy isn’t even close to the top reason (I’m sure some readers will disagree and argue this point but watch the slide show below first).

Part of the solution is something called “networking”. Let me share a real story that emphasizes the value and “fun” in networking as part of that solution.

Recently, a college junior (engineering major) discussed their passion for sports equipment engineering as a career. Short term, this student had hoped for a student internship before entering their senior year. Long term he wanted to know the industry and work for the best company engaged in sports equipment engineering. – What a vision! –

I suggested he “search for and find” the professional association that served the continuing education needs of sports equipment engineers. Sure enough there is such a thing (http://www.continuinged.uml.edu/isea2012/) and he signed up as a student member (discounted price) and flew from Dallas to Massachusetts to attend the conference last summer. He met many in the “business” and has built a networking foundation that will very likely lead to a great first career job and perhaps a career company when he graduates this next year. He doesn’t have a 4.0 GPA. What he has is passion for the career, a good GPA from a good university and a vision.

To help students and recent grads in the job hunt, I’ve put together a slide show that can easily be narrated by a Career Services professional but is also of value as just a slide show for anyone trying to figure out the mystery to effective job hunting. This “guide” applies to the hunt for an internship as well.

Click on the “Full Screen” button (bottom right) to view the presentation. Good luck in your job search!

Career Coaching for Students is the solution
Career Coaching for Students™ offers high school and college students (two versions of the program) the opportunity to develop a clear picture of self and their future that lifts self-esteem, increases academic performance and helps the family avoid unnecessary costs of changing majors and extending college due to changes in direction. Student Resource Central is the most comprehensive resource portal for career exploration and educational strategy research links. The Career Coaching for Students program assists students in finding their passion and establishing a path to success. For more information, visit the website at http://www.careercoachingforstudents.net.
Chief Discovery Officer, Success Discoveries

Carl Nielson

Carl Nielson is an organizational development consultant, professional career and executive/leadership coach and creator of the nationally recognized program Career Coaching for Students™ . Career Coaching for Students is available as a district-wide high school program, college freshman class and in group and on-one-one offerings through certified career coaches throughout the United States, Canada and other countries. Contact Carl Nielson at carl@successdiscoveries.com or call 972-346-2892 to discuss specific needs. Or visit us at http://www.careercoachingforstudents.net

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