Structure
• How much autonomy and independence will you have in your educational life?
• How will your learning and progress be evaluated?
Learning
• What type of learning environment will you seek out (e.g., resources, class size, hands-on)?
• How academically rigorous will your education be?
Time
• How many years will you dedicate to pursuing your education and training?
• How much time during a week will you dedicate to pursuing your education and training?
Relationships
• What will your interactions with faculty/instructors be like?
• What role will relationships with coworkers play in your life?
Status
• What type of financial investment will you make in your education?
• What will be the reputation of the institution you attend?
Environment
• What will your institution’s setting/environment be like?
• In what geographic location will you pursue your education?
Having a clearer sense of your life, career, and educational goals will enhance both your understanding of the information to come and the usefulness of it in helping you identify psychology-related careers that may be in your future.
Assessing and Developing Career Goals 57
Suggested Exercises
1. Familiarize yourself with the career services provided to students at your institution. Many colleges and universities have a career services center or office that provides helpful career-related information and assistance to students, typically free of charge. Develop an under-standing of what types of resources they provide, and if possible, arrange a meeting with a career counselor to discuss your progress in develop-ing career goals.
2. Complete several additional self-assessment tasks to supplement those provided in the chapter. Use these additional tasks to gather more informa-tion about your life, career, and/or educainforma-tional interests and abilities as you work to further develop your goals. Many self-assessment tasks are available online either for free or for a small fee, but be cautious about how you interpret any feedback. Rather than view the results as definitive information about you or your career goals, view it as yet another piece of potentially helpful information to use in formulating goals for yourself. Several websites offer overviews
of the numerous online self-assessment tools available, including:
• Quintessential Careers, at http://
www.quintcareers.com/online_assessment_
review.html
• The Riley Guide, at http://www.rileyguide.com/
assess.html
3. Attend a career fair. Career fairs are typically organized by colleges and universities to provide students with opportunities to interact with area businesses and organizations. Fairs are often advertised by your institution’s career services center or through the offices that coordinate student activities. If your institution has no information about career fairs, contact the career services centers of neighboring institutions to inquire about any upcoming fairs they are familiar with. Many students believe that if they are not currently seeking a job, that they have nothing to gain from attending a career fair.
But by attending you will learn about a variety of opportunities in your area that you may not have even known existed.
Suggested Readings
Curran, S. J., & Greenwald, S. (2006). Smart moves for liberal arts grads: Finding a path to your perfect career. Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press.
Pollak, L. (2007). Getting from college to career: 90 things to do before you join the real world. New York:
HarperCollins.
References
Bolles, R. N. (2007). What color is your parachute?
2008: A practical manual for job-hunters and career-changers. Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press.
Cass, M. H., Siu, O. L., Faragher, E. B., & Cooper, C. L. (2003). A meta-analysis of the relationship between job satisfaction and employee health in
Hong Kong. Stress and Health: Journal of the International Society for the Investigation of Stress, 19, 79 –95.
Chiu, L. (1990). The relationship of career goal and self-esteem among adolescents. Adolescence, 25, 593 –597.
Faragher, E. B., Cass, M., & Cooper, C. L. (2005). The relationship between job satisfaction and health:
A meta-analysis. Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 62, 105 –112.
Harrist, S., Carlozzi, B. L., McGovern, A. R., &
Harrist, A. W. (2007). Benefits of expressive writing and expressive talking about life goals. Journal of Research in Personality, 41, 923–930.
Headey, B. (2008). Life goals matter to happiness:
A revision of set-point theory. Social Indicators Research, 86, 213 –231.
Holland, J. L. (1959). A theory of vocational choice.
Journal of Counseling Psychology, 6, 35 – 45.
Hull-Blanks, E., Kurpius, S. E. R., Befort, C., Sollenberger, S., Nicpon, M. F., & Huser, L. (2005).
Career goals and retention-related factors among college freshmen. Journal of Career Development, 32, 16 –30.
King, L. A. (2001). The health benefits of writing about life goals. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27, 798 – 807.
Kubota, Y. (1982). An empirical study on the effect of career goal setting. Japanese Journal of Experi-mental Social Psychology, 21, 149 –157.
Lee, C., Bobko, P., Earley, P. C., & Locke, E. A. (1991).
An empirical analysis of a goal setting question-naire. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 12, 467– 482.
Oyserman, D., Terry, K., & Bybee, D. (2002). A possible selves intervention to enhance school involvement. Journal of Adolescence, 25, 313 –326.
Parsons, F. (1909). Choosing a vocation. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin.
Roberson, L. (1990). Prediction of job satisfaction from characteristics of personal work goals. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 11, 29 – 41.
Super, D. E. (1963). Vocational development in adolescence and early adulthood: Tasks and beha-viors. In D. E. Super, R. Starishevsky, N. Martin, &
J. P. Jordan (Eds.), Career development: Self-concept theory essays in vocational development (pp. 79–95).
New York: College Entrance Examination Board.
Introduction
This chapter details a variety of issues related to preparation for employment upon graduation with a bachelor’s degree. Topics covered include:
• work settings of recent graduates;
• what employers want from applicants for entry-level positions and ways to develop these attributes while in school (e.g., suggested coursework and experiences);
• finding entry-level positions;
• preparing job application materials (e.g., cover letters and résumés);
• preparing for and completing job interviews and considering offers.
Before we jump into the topics, we would like to highlight a few points to keep in mind.
As noted earlier in the book and as a reminder, the bachelor’s degree in psychology can be seen from two distinct perspectives (a preprofessional degree and a liberal arts degree).
The preprofessional degree mirrors the natural sciences in that to become a physician, dentist, surgeon, etc., you first earn your bachelor’s degree in one of the sciences and then continue your education in medical/dental school. The corollary with psychology is that to become a psychologist you first earn your bachelor’s degree in psychology then con-tinue your education in graduate school. In this way, the student is using the bachelor’s degree as a stepping stone (i.e., a preprofessional degree). From the second perspective, the liberal arts degree provides the student with a well-rounded education in the human-ities, fine arts, natural sciences, and social sciences. A liberal arts education provides the student the opportunity to gain general knowledge and critical thinking and com-munication skills that can be applied to a wide array of circumstances (i.e., job settings and opportunities). With this in mind, the vantage point of this chapter is using the bachelor’s degree in psychology as a liberal arts degree, which is, using your bachelor’s degree as a foundation for entering the job market immediately upon graduation.