Career Straetgies
A new type of career development course
The primary focus of most career guidance in the United States is on the choice of a career. This webpage introduces Career Strategies, a new type of career guidance course that instead focuses on the skill of making career decisions throughout your life. Career Strategies comes free with CSM, and so anyone taking CSM in New Mexico can access this course.
Overview of Career Strategies
People make many career decisions throughout their life. This could be choosing the vocational or college program that they'll take after high school, deciding that their current career isn't working for them, signing up for a management program at the fast food restaurant at which they work, or simply asking their manager to help mentor them at work.
Making career decisions includes both mindsets about how one addresses both work and career, as well as specific knowledge and skills to make informed and optimal decisions. Career Strategies is designed to build an internal career coach in a person's head, so it can guide them all day, every day as they navigate the world of work.
Lessons and Resources
Some Career Strategies lessons:
- the differences between a job and career -- it's not about the job you have, it's about how the approach you take of building a career
- you should always be thinking about your job, and not just at a few career transition points
- there's more to a job than how much it pays, and how to think about the different factors
- a living wage gives you a basic target salary -- it's an attainable wage that provides nearly as much life satisfaction as a person with a million-dollar income (and the student is presented a link to the MIT living wage calculator)
- the key to work and life success isn't choosing a job with purpose and passion, but learning how to put purpose, passion and life satisfaction into any job that you have -- you'll do it better, enjoy it more, and get promotions.
- you should always be on a career path, but if it's not working for you, it's OK to jump into another pathway, and there are ways to do that effectively
These lessons are paired with free resources from around the web to help a person in career planning.
How to take Career Strategies
Career Strategies is provided free along with CSM, and can be taken as interludes with CSM, before or after CSM, or on its own.
The course takes most people 6-8 hours to complete, but there are resources that can fill many hours of student time if they are interested.
If you have any questions, please contact us.
