Subject: Telecourse/Career Planning
Grades: 9-12-Adult
Length: 26 episodes @ 30 minutes
Distributors: ALSS
School Record Rights: Fair Use
Web Site:http://www.pbs.org/als/guide/courselistings/courses/
career_adv/index.html
The host and instructor, Rebecca Haddock, is a licensed career counselor at the University of San Diego in San Diego, CA. She provides employment and educational advising to the military, high schools, community college and social service agencies. Throughout the course we follow five "real people" as they go through the process of discovering and realizing their career goals. Each episode of the course includes a "Hot Tip," a short, simple motivating suggestion for action. These are designed to help students overcome the inertia which often accompanies the new territory of career and life planning. Our Hot Tips instructor, Patrick Combs, is author of Major in Success, a motivational and campus speaker popular all over the US and calls himself a success coach. He exhorts students to, "Be Great."101 Introduction: this lesson introduces the students to the three main components of the career development process: self knowledge and exploration, career and educational exploration; career planning and implementation. Students also meet real people who will describe their career decision-making experiences throughout the coming episodes, as well as some of the experts including Richard Bolles, Jeremy Rifkin, Barbara Sher and Howard Figler.
102 Where are you now?: This lesson introduces students to the Donald Super's concept of life roles, and the importance of having support systems. Students evaluate their satisfaction with their current life roles-work, home and family, leisure, self-improvement and community, and begin to identify key people in their personal support system.
103 Self Knowledge and Beliefs: This lesson presents simple methods for expanding self-awareness, and introduces students to the connections between their beliefs, their attitudes and their subsequent behaviors. Students practice techniques for identifying personal beliefs about their ability to be successful by listening to their self-talk, and begin to develop their Personal Career Profile.
104 Values: This lesson introduces students to the relationship between their values and the kinds of choices they make each day, and how values relate to career decisions. Students begin to identify some of their key values and consider how their family background may have shaped their values.
105 Personality and Interests: This lesson presents the connections between personality, interests and work preferences such as working with information, ideas, people and things. Students begin to identify interest patterns and aspects of their personality through various exercises.
106 Knowledge, skills and abilities: In this lesson, students are introduced to the differences between knowledge, skills and abilities. In addition they are presented with the basic skills required b today's employers identified by the US Dept of Labor SCANS Report. Students learn to identify their skills through examining past accomplishments and to consider how skill development may be influenced by societal or cultural pressures.
107 Keeping Track of Self Knowledge and Exploration: this lesson concludes the self assessment section of the course. Students expand their personal career profiles by identifying preferred values, and interests and by identifying current skills as well as well as skills they want to develop in the future.
108 Introduction to Career and Educational Exploration: explore contemporary changes in the economy and the world of work. This lesson introduces three principal changes-technology, globalization and changing workforce demographics. Students review a variety of strategies for coping with these changes including considering new work options such as self-employment and contract work, and the need for lifelong learning.
109 The Changing Workplace: Technology & Globalization: how technology has changed the kind of work we do, how work is done, and where work can be done. Students are introduced to the concept of global business and the skills essential to stay employable in a global economy.
110 What Employers Want: Skills and attitudes: This lesson introduces students to the skills and attitudes essential for success in today's workplace-competence, communication, adaptability, communication, group effectiveness, and influence. Students learn to identify their transferable skills, and evaluate their degree of work readiness.
111 What's Out There: How the World of Work is Organized: introduced to the distinctions and similarities between industries and functions. Several primary industries and job functions are described and students gain insight into how their interests can offer clues to industries or types of work that they might enjoy.
112 Generating Career Options: Students are presented with a variety of strategies for generating a list of career possibilities. Students are encouraged to brainstorm ideas and emphasize quantity over quality of ideas at this stage of the process.
113 Researching Career Options: New Technologies and Current Techniques: Explores career options. This lesson introduces the students to both print and electronic sources of occupational information. Students learn the components of a research strategy and are presented with the categories of key information to help them focus their research efforts.
114 Informational Interviewing and Networking: students are introduced to the benefits of using networking and informational interviewing to learn more about careers which interest them. Students learn how to identify networking opportunities and potential networking contacts, as well as a strategy for conducting informational interviews.
115 Evaluating Career Options: Presents students with the three C's-a framework for evaluating career options using content, conditions, and compensation. Students use information from their personal career profiles to identify their own preferred content, conditions and compensation and begin to compare their preferences to information gathered from their occupational research.
116 Overcoming Barriers to Employment: students are introduced to some of the legal issues related to discrimination in hiring and in the workplace, as well as some techniques for confronting, challenging and coping with discrimination. In addition, students are presented with questions they can ask to gauge a company's corporate culture and commitment to diversity.
117 Lifelong Learning: This lesson looks at the range of educational options students may consider in order to obtain their occupational goals including vocational training, community college, undergraduate and graduate degrees. Students are presented with the benefits of experiential education such as coops and internships, and the need for lifelong learning to keep skills current.
118 Intro to Career Planning and Implementation: introduces the implementation phase of the course and provides an overview of the next steps including making a career decision, deciding on an action plan and launching the search for work opportunities. Common myths or misperceptions about the job search process are also presented and debunked.
119 Decision Making Strategies: takes a look at both rational linear and intuitive decision making strategies. Students begin to assess their personal decision making style and gain insight into how their values, willingness to take risks, and ability to be objective may influence their decision making process. Finally, students are introduced to a strategy for using their personal priorities to guide their decision making.
120 Goal Setting and Action Planning: students are given criteria for attainable goals and objectives-specific, measurable, realistic and meaningful-and practice evaluating goals on the basis of these criteria. Students begin to draft their own goals and action plan for implementing their search.
121 Finding Work Opportunities: focuses on finding work opportunities by accessing the hidden job market through networking. Students are guided in the development of a networking statement and presented with advantages of several methods of finding work including cold calling, employment agencies, temporary assignments, internships and volunteering.
122 Staying on Track in your Work Search: at this point in their job search students may be experiencing stress and having difficulty staying motivated. This lesson covers a variety of stress management and time management techniques that can help students stay focused and on track.
123 Resume Preparation: Covers the development and use of both chronological and functional resumes. Students draft accomplishment statement using action verbs and emphasizing the results they produced.
124 Interviewing Strategies: This is the first of two lessons on interviewing, and introduces the three essential steps to interview preparation, know yourself, know the position and know the company. Students consider their responses to some typical interview questions and learn the STAR (Situation-Task-Action-Result) framework for describing their accomplishments to employers.
125 Interview Follow up-Specific steps students should follow immediately after an interview. Writing a thank you letter, maintaining their networking and keeping momentum in their work search. Strategies for turning a rejection into a positive and useful experience are also described.
126 Series Conclusion: reviews several methods for getting unstuck and staying on track while looking for work opportunities. Students draft one-year, ten-year and lifetime goals to help them build a vision for the future.