Choosing a Career
“What do you want to be when you grow up?” It’s a question that everyone gets, and is very difficult to answer for so many of us, especially if you try to figure it out on your own.
PLEASE don’t try to do this section by yourself. Reach out to your Eastside Career Coach and they can guide you through every step of this process.
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Consider this: It is estimated that you will have 4 different careers in your life. Not 4 jobs. 4 careers.
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Your dream job(s) might not be created yet. Only a few years ago, there was no iPhone, no apps, no YouTube, no streaming videos. Think about all of the industries, companies, and jobs created related to these things.
It’s difficult to predict exactly what you want to do when careers are constantly being innovated.
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Design thinking is the best process to help you find your way in terms of career exploration. It was created at Stanford in their Design School, and we love this way of thinking and have adapted it to meet the needs of Eastside students and alumni.
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We call it the Career Design Process.
REFLECT.
Reflect on your reactions to different experiences in your life (classes, jobs, internships, volunteer activities, hobbies, or informational interviews). Simply, this phase is about uncovering what your interests are and digging into understanding what you like about them.
DEFINE.
Narrow down your list of interests from your reflections and organize them into categories. This will eventually become your Ideal Job Description, a document created alongside your career coach to guide your job/internship searches.
BRAINSTORM.
Make a list of as many career paths as possible based on your interests. Your Ideal Job Description is a great tool to use during this phase.
PROTOTYPE.
Choose 3-5 careers that you are most interested in, sketch a timeline, and develop questions that would help you determine if you want to continue pursuing the career path or cross it off the list.
TEST.
It's time to learn more about the careers you picked in the prototyping phase. The goal is to experience the career path(s) in some way to gain insight on whether you'd like to continue to pursue the path. After you test, it's important to reflect on what you liked and disliked to guide your next move.
It’s not linear! You will jump back and forth between these phases as you try new things and reflect.