1.Recognize your skills, interests, and values.
Success in your career starts with you, so it makes sense to start your career search with a thorough understanding of what you do best, what you enjoy doing, and what is most important to you. Clicking on this section will offer you a variety of on-campus and internet resources to help you describe yourself in terms of your skills, interests, and values.
2.Explore the possibilities.
Knowing what you want and what you are good at doing is a starting point. A next step is to determine the kinds of industries, organizations, and work settings that will make the best use of what you want and you have to offer. Clicking on this section will lead you to a list of resources for discovering what is “out there.”
3.Connect your skills, interests, and values with majors.
While some occupations require specific fields of study–you can’t be a surgeon, for example, without a medical degree–many fields allow entry from a variety of majors and career preparation programs. Similarly, a single major can provide preparation for a wide range of career opportunities. So, it is important to find out what majors can lead you in the career directions you want to go and what completing those majors will involve. You will also want to know how minors, certificates, and electives can add to the skills developed by your major. Clicking on this section will take you to a list of resources for finding out more about academic programs at UNI and for connecting majors with job titles.
4.Gather information on specific careers.
Once you have identified majors and broad fields of interest, you’ll want to find out more about the occupations related to those majors and fields. What would you do on a day-to-day basis? What is the employment outlook? What salary ranges are possible? What does it take to get your first job and to move ahead in the profession? Clicking on this section will provide you with a variety of resources for finding out more about the specific career areas that interest you.
5.Develop career-related skills and experience.
Employers look for more than a college degree when they hire. In addition to academic preparation, they want personal qualities like flexibility and initiative and functional skills such as oral and written communication, relationship-building, and organizing and planning, which apply across career fields. In addition, surveys of what employers look for in new college graduates have consistently emphasized the importance of career-related experience. Clicking on this section will lead you to a menu of ways to develop your career-related skills and add to the experience you can list on your resume.
