Career Prototyping
Career Prototyping Paper (100 points)
Real world advice from experienced professionals is invaluable, so make this assignment work for you! Capitalize on this opportunity to solicit advice to help you make an informed decision about your career path. Ask the personal and tough questions that are meaningful to you, so by the end of this experience, you can reflect and incorporate these individuals’ experiences and lives as you begin create your own professional way forward.
Assignment Description
Identify two (2) professionals (no family members) in the field you would like to matriculate upon graduation. These professionals should represent at least two (2) different areas. That is, if you are interested in Accounting, you may talk to someone in Tax and someone else in Audit; if you are interested in Marketing, you may talk to someone who works in social media marketing, and someone in merchandising; or someone who works for an agency and someone who works in a large corporation; etc.
A paper between 3-4 pages, single-spaced, with the following information:
- Describe the career path your interviewees took
- How did they get where they are in terms of degree, promotions, change of companies, change of careers, networking, etc.
- What job skills, experience, education and licenses are needed in their field and how do they suggest you best acquire & develop them.
Design Your Life; Share with your interviewees some of the exercises we’ve done in class regarding Designing Your Life. Which of the exercises do they think are most helpful in determining a good career fit? Which, if any, of the exercises have they utilized over the course of their career and/or which of them do they wish they had utilized?
Ethics: What ethical dilemmas are faced in their field? Ask for specifics and how the issues are handled/resolved/avoided. Do they have a strict code of ethics at their company? What, if any, ethical dilemmas have the interviewees faced? How did they handle them and what would they have done differently?
Diversity & Inclusion: How diverse is the field they’re in? Explain. How has the interviewee seen diversity & inclusion issues handled? Does their company have specific measures in place to handle diversity & inclusion issues (pay, hiring, treatment, etc.)?
Assignment Checklist
Your paper will be 3-4 pages in length and will include into two halves (one for each interview).
In each of the halves, please clearly list (use a header) 5 sections:
- Section 1: career path your interviewees took, degree, promotions, change of companies, change of careers, networking, etc. and job skills, experience, education and licenses are needed in their field etc.
- Section 2: Their thoughts and experiences with Designing Your Life and/or any other career way finding model if they don’t know DYL.
- Section 3: Their thoughts and experiences with ethics.
- Section 4: Their thoughts and experiences with Diversity and Inclusion throughout their career.
- Section 5: This should be the longest section and should consist of your reflection including but not limited to:
- Which of your interviewees’ responses did you find most helpful? Why? Which of their responses did you find most surprising? Why?
- How have these interviews helped you to investigate your career choice (either solidified the choice or shown you the need for further investigation).
- What is the next step in your journey of career exploration?
FORMATTING
Please use Times/Calibri 12 font. The paper should be single-spaced and include appropriate use of paragraphs, headers and university-level vocabulary. While this is a personal reflection, you can still write in an academic, professional manner inclusive of university-level grammar, spelling and proofreading prior to submission. This isn’t an English class so we aren’t looking for citations but as equally such, this isn’t a Facebook post.