Each person has a different career journey. And, while it’s not required to follow a specific path to securing your first real job and each subsequent job, creating a plan elevates your chances of success.
The following are areas to consider incorporating into your career plan.
- Identifying your career interests.
- Creating lists of your hard and soft skills.
- Assessing your strengths and characteristics.
- Identifying each of your past and current jobs, volunteer activities, and membership organizations.
- Utilizing appealing key action verbs to describe the tasks and achievements associated with your experiences.
- Providing specific and relatable experience descriptions of your experiences.
- Crafting your resume, featuring your strengths, skills, experiences, and education.
- Presenting your resume for review and accepting constructive feedback.
- Creating a LinkedIn account to showcase the information on your resume and elaborating on your interests and experiences.
- Understanding the messages shared through posture, body language, and facial expressions.
- Conducting an assessment of your online presence, particularly messages shared through emails and social media.
- Verbalizing your interests, skills, experiences, and goals through a brief (30-45 second) pitch.
- Practice your elevator pitch in front of others or sharing through video; and, accepting constructive feedback.
- Meeting industry executives, community leaders, and professionals and sharing your career interests, experiences, and goals.
- Articulating your skills, experiences, and interests in interviews.