What Color Is Your Parachute? (16 page)

Savvy Academic Choices

In high school, you have to meet certain academic requirements, but you often have some choice as to how you fulfill those requirements—and you usually have the freedom to choose your electives. Making savvy academic choices can help you land your dream job. If you think that you’ll be going to college, check with your college adviser (or a college that interests you) to schedule the high school courses that will be most beneficial to you when you get to college. For example, taking certain AP (advanced placement) or language courses may actually fulfill college requirements and enable you to begin work on your major sooner, and maybe even finish college sooner.

But what if you’re not that clear about your future? Here are some ideas that will help you no matter what you decide to do after high school:

• Keep your grades up. Strive to get the best grades you can. When you get your report card, ask yourself, “Did I do the best I could in every class?” If not, up your effort.

• Language skills are very valuable. In addition to English, the languages of choice in the business world are Spanish and Chinese. If you’re interested in working in business, seriously consider taking Chinese if your school offers it. Spanish can be useful in many fields—teaching, social service, building and construction, and others. If your school offers Spanish, consider taking it every year.

• If one of your goals in life is to get a well-paying job, take math and science classes. Many challenging careers and high-paying jobs rely heavily on math and science. If your school doesn’t have good teachers in these areas, find a tutor or teach yourself using a self-help math book. A librarian or knowledgeable salesperson at a bookstore can give you suggestions about books that are popular and easy to use.

• Broaden your horizons by learning more about your community, your country, and the world. Through your church or a community service organization (like the Lions Club or Rotary), you may be able to find volunteer projects at home and abroad.

• Talk to adults you know and respect. Ask them how they came to do what they’re doing. Find out what they like and don’t like about their work. Ask if there’s anything they wish they had known or done (in high school or later) that would have affected what they’re doing today.

Developing Job-Search Skills and Creating a Career Portfolio

By doing the exercises in this book, you’ve already started developing your job-search skills, a process that will continue throughout your years of work. Particular job-search skills—skills for information and job interviews, expanding your contacts, writing cover letters and thank-you notes—build on the groundwork you laid in the Discovery Exercises in
part 1
. These concrete skills will
help you pursue your career goals and find your dream job. (They may even help you land a good part-time or summer job while you’re in high school.) Good job-search skills make the job search easier and more efficient as well as more effective.

Visited an In-and-Out Burger restaurant lately? Every member of the team is fully engaged and treats customers with courtesy. I’m hiring a kid that has those skills. I won’t fret too much about their GPA.

—JIM ASCHWANDEN, Rancher and Executive Director, California Agricultural Teachers’ Association

If your high school or public library has a career center, check it out—it’s a good place to build your job-search skills. Find out what resources the center offers. Does it have classes on resume writing, preparing for job interviews, using social networking, or writing cover letters and thank-you notes? If so, take advantage of them. Talk with the career center staff about your interests and goals. They know a lot about careers and jobs and can point you to helpful resources and opportunities. If you don’t have access to a career center, use the Internet and the relevant resources and websites listed in this book.

Here are a few other things you can do to develop your job-search skills and increase your awareness of the world of work:

• Listen to guest speakers and ask them how they got into the work they’re doing.

• Attend career days.

• Continue exploring job possibilities: visit friends or relatives in job settings, develop new contacts and conduct information interviews, or do volunteer work in an area that interests you.

• Attend open houses at community colleges or local universities. Tell college representatives about your interests and ask about possible majors—and prerequisites for those majors—or training programs.

• Go to conferences or meetings of professional organizations that happen near you. Contact the membership officer of professional organizations to find out when the meetings are and if you can come as a guest. As a high school student, you may be able to attend conferences for free.

Job Shadowing

You can learn more about jobs that fit your interests and skills by job shadowing—which means following a person doing a particular job for a day. You might shadow a business executive, a nurse, an architect, a teacher, or an actor. You see everything they see and do: sit in on meetings, phone calls, or contacts with clients or agents; watch them work at the computer or design table; listen to how they teach math to third-graders or prepare their lines for a performance. Job shadowing gives you a real feel for what the day-to-day work is like in a particular profession or job. It also lets you experience the work environment firsthand, which helps you figure out whether you’d like to work in that particular setting all the time.

Job shadowing can be either informal or formal. In the case of informal shadowing, you simply ask a parent, acquaintance, or someone you’ve done an information interview with if you could shadow them to learn more about their work. Start with a half day—that’s much easier on the person you are shadowing. If the work really interests you, ask for additional time on another day that works for them.

Formal job shadowing is usually done through a school, career center, or other organization. The
National Job Shadow Coalition, for example, is a joint effort of America’s Promise, Junior Achievement, the U.S. Department of Education, and the U.S. Department of Labor. Their yearlong shadowing effort kicks off on Groundhog Day (February 2) each year. Throughout the United States, students shadow workplace mentors to see what different jobs entail and how what they’re learning in school relates to the workplace. Past workplace mentors include former president George H. W. Bush, former secretary of state Colin Powell, Monster CEO Jeff Taylor, and
Today Show
anchor Matt Lauer, Al Roker,
and Ann Curry. (For more information on the Job Shadow program and job shadowing in general, see the
resources section
.)

PARACHUTE TIP

It’s impossible for you to pick a single job for the rest of your life—whether you want to or not. The world of work is changing too much for you to possibly choose a job that will last your entire life. The Occupational Outlook Quarterly reported that you will probably have ten different jobs between the ages of eighteen and thirty-eight. And at age thirty-eight you will likely be in the workforce at least another thirty to thirty-five years. We mention this to reinforce that by doing career planning, you are not picking a job for life. First, you’ll want to learn what you want to do to earn a living when you leave school, whenever that is.

Job shadowing is an excellent way to check out jobs that might match your parachute, particularly your potential dream jobs. You also may find someone who would be willing to be your mentor in a particular field.
Mentors are so helpful, you’ll probably want more than one. Mentors can help you recognize and develop the skills you have that will be most valuable in a particular field as well as give you guidance on the education or training you’ll need, including an appropriate college major. Mentors may also provide valuable contacts for summer employment in the field while you’re going to school or contacts for landing a full-time job when you’re ready for that. Mentors may give you references when you’re job hunting and continue to guide you in your early (and later) days on the job. A good mentor is invaluable; he or she will share a wealth of experience, wisdom, insight, and practical knowledge with you—much of which you’re not likely to learn in school. Every time you talk with a mentor, be sure to follow up with a thank-you note.

Internships

Through internships, high school students can gain practical experience in a supervised setting. Generally, an internship runs for several weeks or months so that the intern can learn specific skills or procedures. Internships at the high school level are usually unpaid, although there are some summer programs that do provide salaries. But internships aren’t about money. They’re about learning valuable skills that will make you more employable or provide you with firsthand information that will help you make sound decisions about your career goals. If you do well, your internship can also gain you business contacts and employment references.