Summer Career Activities

The end of the year is just around the corner. Career Services would like to extend our congratulations to those of you graduating. As you begin your career, or take whatever other step is next, we encourage you to stay in touch. Dean (and soon, our new career advisor) is able to meet with alumni for advising appointments up to one quarter after graduation — that’s through August for those of you finishing in June — while the UW Career & Internship Center takes appointments up to two years after graduation.

Once you’ve settled in at your new organization, please also feel free to reach out about hosting a recruitment event at the iSchool. As you may have experienced from your time here, information sessions and iLounge hangouts that feature iSchool alumni are particularly helpful to our current students, and they can help Career Services in strengthening our relationships with industry partners. This year, we collaborated on recruitment events with alumni from companies including Fast Enterprises, Avanade, West Monroe Partners, AT&T, Liberty Mutual, and BlackRock.

For those of your returning in the fall, below we’ve outlined some career-related things you do this summer — either in place of or in addition to an internship — to help ensure that once you graduate, you step into a career you find engaging and fulfilling. The newsletter is largely a compilation of disparate topics we’ve covered in more depth throughout the year.

Determine your values.

Finding a company at which you’re inspired to grow is difficult if you don’t know what you hold personally valuable. Is your main career goal maximizing income? Or are you more concerned with finding a company focused on social good? Determining the answer to questions like these is immensely important in the job search — if you are someone who prioritizes social good, for example, you can imagine the angst you might feel at a company that ignored such concerns in the name of increased profits.

More on this topic here. Continue reading →

Career (and Life) Reading

Summer is a great time to start a job or work an internship. Summer is a great time to do something other than work a job or internship. Summer is also a great time to read.

This week, we’ve compiled reading material that covers both topics are that are explicitly career-related and those just generally relevant to recent and soon-to-be grads. The first part features a book recommendation from both Career Services members, followed by a list of online outlets putting out useful content.

Career Services’ favorite books

Dean’s choice: First Job First Paycheck: how to get the most out of both…without help from your parents by Jeff Lehman

Jeff Lehman is the Founder and CEO of his own holding company, and sits on the Board of Advisors for the Foster School’s Professional Sales Program. His book focuses on personal finances and navigating the professional landscape, with an eye toward recent graduates.

From Dean:

First Job First Paycheck is a good read for young professionals that covers everything from getting your first job or internship, to managing money and making smart financial decisions. The first sections of the book cover general information on job searching, networking, and setting goals, which is most applicable to current juniors, seniors, and first-year master’s students.

I found the most value in section three, which gives practical examples on money management. Author Jeff Lehman discusses the importance of your FICO score and building credit, saving for retirement via 401(k) and Roth IRAs (and other options), and gives example budgets and suggestions on how to create them. He also makes practical suggestions on how to protect your assets, such as using renters insurance, which can be as cheap as $10/month but protect you from the cost of replacing your personal property due to theft, fire, vandalism, or flooding.

While one of the chapters in the section (“20 ways real life can impact your financial life”) covers some obvious decisions to avoid, such as drinking or texting while driving, Lehman also brings light to common financial mishaps people make when they are shopping for engagement rings, homes and mortgages, and having kids. Continue reading →

Career Self-Assessment

It’s common wisdom to seek jobs that match your strengths and interest, though the actual task of doing so can be difficult if you aren’t quite sure what those are. Self-assessments, or personality tests, can help you find out. Helpful tools in career planning and development, the tests give further insight into your goals and unique abilities, with the ultimate goal of aligning the two.

It should be noted that these self-assessments aren’t meant to provide irrefutable answers about your personality. They’re best used as a means to simply start thinking more critically about your disposition, particularly as it pertains to the workplace. If you disagree with the results of any one assessment, that’s fine — you almost surely know yourself better than the test — but the questions should spur helpful self-reflection regardless.

With that caveat in mind, below are a couple recommended self-assessments.

O*NET Interest Profiler

The O*NET Interest Profiler is an assessment on My Next Move, an interactive tool for job seekers and students to learn more about their career options that’s sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor. A fairly traditional test, the Profiler asks you to rate specific tasks on a scale of “strongly dislike” to “strongly like.” Example prompts include everything from “build kitchen cabinets” to “help people with personal or emotional problems.”

At the end of the questionnaire, your answers will be scored along six different metrics: realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising, and conventional. You’ll then be able to view suggested careers based on those scores, with the ability to filter the results by the amount of required preparation and/or education. Each suggested occupation will come with an abundance of information, including job duties, necessary skills and abilities, technologies used, and average salary. Continue reading →