[Jessamyn Perlus] Okay, welcome everyone. Thank you for joining us this morning, at least in Ithaca, New York. So today we are going to be presenting about how to use your interests, values, and skills to explore careers. So you can use the Q and A function or the chat function to submit your questions as we go through and we'll have Q and A at the end. We will email you PDFs of the presentation and we will post the recording of this, today's workshop, to the career services website. So welcome again. My name is Jess Perlus. I'm the manager of the Career Exploration Unit and with me today is Heather. [Heather Fortenberry] Hello everyone. I'm Heather Fortenberry. I'm a Career Exploration Coach also with the Career Exploration Unit. [Jessamyn Perlus] So this is the Career Development Cycle wheel that we like to show at the beginning of every presentation. But it's especially relevant today because we're really going to be focusing on that first segment of the blue. Understand yourself. And as you can see, it's really necessary to understand different aspects of yourself, your values, interests, et cetera, in order to help develop your focus and explore what options could be a good fit for you when it comes to career. Also want to let you know that a lot of the content we cover today is also in our new Career Exploration module on the Career Development Toolkit in Canvas, so Heather's gonna pop a link to the chat in there. If you haven't already joined the Canvas Toolkit, highly recommend you do that. There's a lot of built-in interactive activities, particularly in the Exploration module. So like I mentioned, we're going to talk about interests, skills, values, and goals today. And I'm going to try to use the famous literary figure Sherlock Holmes to illustrate some of these different aspects and how they might fit together when you think about your own job search and self exploration. So first is this term, self-assess. And it's basically this process of identifying what do you enjoy doing, what are you good at, and what matters most to you? And it can be really helpful to just take a step back, understand these things before you get too far on a particular path or when deciding what the next steps should be. And so this knowledge can be really helpful. It'll translate to more confidence and better answers in interviews. You'll have great keywords to put on your resumes and cover letter documents. There's a lot of benefits towards self-assessment or self-reflection. So first up is interests. And interests are reflected in the activities that you do. Identifying your interests is going to help you focus ideas and pursuits, keep you engaged. And if you're more engaged, you might find work more satisfying. So you've probably thought about this before, but what do you enjoy most when it comes to your classes? What about outside hobbies that you might have? And are you aware of how the interests that you have connect with the career options that you might be considering. So these are just great discussion questions to sort of get you started. Additional things that can help you uncover your interests are reflecting on past experiences. What have you found intellectually stimulating? Do you feel really strongly about certain topics? You could talk about them for hours if given the opportunity. What was a great conversation you had recently? What about it made it so rewarding for you? Hobbes, extra curriculars, even the kind of movies you watch, or the TV shows or the books you read, the websites you go to. Those are also clues for kind of your underlying interest profile. So this is an activity that we often do in person, but today we have a more virtual version of it. And the idea is that a party is going on. At this party, it just so happens that people with similar interests are sort of congregating in different areas of the room. So I'm going to briefly describe these six kind of clusters of people. And then we'll do a quick poll to see which one sounds the most like you. So starting on the left, these folks like working with their hands, assembling things. Maybe they're mechanically inclined or athletic. They enjoy objects, tools, plants, animals definitely like being outdoors. Next up is people who are, they like to observe, learn, analyze. They kind of pride themselves on being smart. Maybe they like physical, behavioral, and medical sciences, they're very into investigating. Third one is people who are imaginative, creative. They're known for artistic activities. Projects that let them be original. Being in unstructured situations is where they tend to thrive. Next one, people who like helping and teaching others. Maybe they volunteer, do community service. They'd like to assist in any way they can. Next one, people who like leadership. Maybe they like managing projects or people, maybe they're more persuasive. They like competition and challenge, influencing, persuading, performing. That's, that's the kind of environment that they thrive in. Last one over here is people who like to be well-organized, very detail oriented. They, they like setting up systems and procedures, have structure, working with data or numbers. So you might be drawn to a couple groups, that's fine. Think about, you know, if I were to walk into the room, this hypothetical room, which group, would I find myself drawn to first? So I've just launched a poll. It would be great if you can vote for where you would go first. Yes, we'll give it another second or two and the last couple of folks vote. All right, I'm going to end the poll so I can show you the results. But as you can see, there's sort of a distribution across, not too many folks specifically picked the hands-on one or the imaginative, creative, intuitive, and that's completely fine, but it's helpful to be able to kinda get to know yourself and recognize these clusters. So they actually have names. This is actually based on a theory which I'll talk more about on the next slide. But these types are known as realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising, and conventional. As I mentioned, this is the official career theory. It's named after John, or created by John Holland. And he says that interests, your patterns of likes and dislikes can be matched to the work that a person does. And so people instinctively seek an environment that matches their type. Kind of this idiom, birds of a feather flock together. So these are the six types and they are arranged in a hexagon. And the thought is, you can also identify jobs. Jobs can be classified in the same exact way that an individual can. And so the more you can match yourself to the environment literally with those six letters. The idea is you'll be more satisfied and you'll be more productive in that work role. So to wrap up interests. As we talked about self-assessment here, there's reflection questions you can do on your own, and then there's interest inventories. So here we've got links that are free to you. You can do the O'NET Interest Profiler or some of these other ones. Do them any times, find out your official type. Or if you're really interested in this particular one, you can meet with me or someone in Arts and Sciences and do the Strong Interest Inventory, which is a very long 291 inventory of, that'll match you with some of these things. So I'm going to pause there. And I saw we had a hand raised. If you want, you can type your question in the chat or the Q and A, then we'll be able to answer it. I don't see it raised anymore. Can we put the links to the chat? Will the presentation? Yep. We are going to be emailing you a PDF which will have the live URL links. Sometime by the end of the week today. Good question, they're all also linked in that Career Development Toolkit that we did link to earlier. And so I think we will go next to skills, I'll turn it over to Heather. [Heather Fortenberry] So skills, as Jess mentioned, is part, is definitely a part of that understanding yourself. So kind of thinking about what is a vocational skill, we talk about them sometimes as competencies, skills. These are definitely those aspects of you that you're, that you develop or are in the process of developing or identify that you need to develop. And they can really influence your career. The career options that you have. Some of them, right? A lot of them. You also want to really think about not only what those skills are, but be really aware of how,  or what skills you have, identifying those skills, and being able to articulate the skills that you have. And as you can see, right, the awareness of your skills, is going to be really helpful as you're writing your resume, as you're developing your cover letter and really highlighting those skills that are important to you and to the company or organization that you're thinking about. Certainly as a way to market yourself, whether it's interviews or as you're introducing yourself, your pitch. Certainly finding those areas that you want to improve. If you want to go into research and you know there's specific lab skill that you need to incorporate, you'll find ways to do that or coding, et cetera. And it can help you decide on those possible careers. Because obviously, the skills that you have, you want to be able to apply to the different careers that you're, that you're considering. Or again, identifying those skills that you need to have in order to be successful in that career. So identifying those skills that you want to incorporate, or even identifying how you develop the skills that you've already had can be helpful. So where do those skills come? Sometimes they're personality traits. I always like to say like, I like math, I do like math, but I don't love math. So, you know, that's fine. That's maybe part of my personal experience. Maybe it's part of my personality, I can do it. But I'm not going to put a whole lot of time into that intentional practice, into building that further. And that was, that's a decision that I personally made. Thinking about how you build on those skills. I think that this is a really important area when we think about skill development. Some of that can be learning from other people. Obviously, when you're in school, you are learning from professors, but your classmates and maybe you're learning through observing. That risk taking I think is areas where sometimes you push yourself a little bit further because you're interested in it versus other areas where you're like, I don't know if that's really necessarily something I want to put out there. So it is really good, especially for those areas that you want to continue to build, to take those risks. Don't worry about messing up or failing. That's where you get a lot of times some of that growth, that professional and personal growth through failure, setting those goals, meeting those goals can be really successful and satisfying. And then through that hard work in a supportive environment, certainly that's, those are areas where a lot of times you're going to be continuing to build on those skills. So identifying your skills can be hard, honestly. You think about sometimes that, that very popular question interview like, what are your strengths? What are your skills that you do well? And that can be hard enough to really identify what those are and why is that? One. It can be hard to think about how to talk about it, how to articulate the vocabulary for your skills. Like, Oh, I'm a good leader or oh, I really like working in a lab, but sometimes kind of identifying those specific skills that you're using. Comparison, right? I think that we're all guilty of comparison, comparing ourselves to others. So when you think about a resume for example, and you include a proficiency, oh, I'm really good at Excel. Like okay, like how good? Like what's your, what's your range? What's that rating? Thinking about how skills sometimes are very slow to develop and so it can be hard to recognize that moment when you're like, oh, this is something that I'm really good at. And we're all probably guilty of kind of putting ourselves down in terms of abilities. The other one I'll just mention too is I think sometimes, because skills maybe just come naturally to us, we don't actually recognize them as well. So that's another, a reason why they can be a little bit hard to think about those skills and articulate them. So it is helpful to think about three different categories of skill. So you have your work content or the specific skills, you have adaptive or self-management skills, and those functional transferable skills. I'm going to talk about each one of those a little bit more in depth, and Jess will pop in to add some. So the work context specific skills like I provided some of these examples as well, pipe fitting or medical procedures, lab skills, using a microscope for example. And so these are definitely those specific skills, that often, you know, are going to be required when you look at job descriptions, they'll have those specific responsibilities listing those specific skills that they're looking for. Those adaptive or self management skills. So, you know, sometimes people think about transferable skills and we'll talk about another area as well, or EQ, that ability to, some of this is like personality, that interpersonal and organizational conditions, et cetera, which those jobs exist. So getting along with others, teamwork or collaboration, responding to authority. Sometimes that's work ethic or ability to self-manage or to be supervised, accepting criticism, feedback, right? That's a good, that sometimes is one that you continue to build on as you grow professionally and personally. But is really a great area where you can identify why you continue to grow and look for those opportunities to develop professionally. Regulating emotion, self-presentation. Sometimes these are really hard to articulate and really provide a level of proficiency. And the last one is that functional transferable skills. So this, this is great. We often are really talking about this in our meetings, our individual meetings with students, helping you to identify a skill that you have built, maybe in one area or experience. And finding ways to articulate how they can be transferable to another type of opportunity. So you think about public speaking, writing, organization, research, critical thinking. These are some areas that I'll show you in just a moment have been identified as skills that employers are looking for. But you could see that as somebody that's working in an environment, whether it's a volunteer experience or an academic experience, we talk about those co-curricular experiences. A lot of times these are skills that you're building there that you can apply to a work experience. And I'll just chime in here, if we go back to that example of Sherlock Holmes and the different kind of skills, the first kind of skill was that knowledge skill. So identifying types of dirt or using a microscope for a, different tools that one would use in the investigative process, then the, you know, the second type of skills, adaptability, being able to work with others. Some people naturally can accept criticism or work with others. Sherlock Holmes is sort of known for being abrasive or difficult to work with. So perhaps that shaped him towards, you know, not working for a government entity, but kind of being an independent contractor because those skills weren't, were gonna fit better in one setting rather than another. And then these transferable skills, obviously things like writing or research or critical thinking are transferable and sort of broader level skills that would work in many different settings. And I think this is, I find this to almost be like the super power slide because a lot of times we'll have students come in who say, like, I don't know what skills I'm building. I don't have any work experience. Or, I don't know how to articulate or how to show that I could do this job, but I really can. So we work with an organization, the National Association of Colleges and Employers, so NACE. And they have identified these career readiness skills. They've identified them honestly through surveys that they've conducted with employers, lots of employers. And these are those skills that they've identified. Critical thinking, problem-solving, oral written communication teamwork, collaboration, digital technology, leadership, professionalism, work ethic, career management, and that global intercultural fluency. So likely you could come up with an example for at least one of these in any of the experiences that you've had. And these are those transferable skills where you can really articulate, hey, you're looking for this, I've got it. And so as we wrap up the skills, here are some of theose additional assessments that you can take and these are also listed in the career development toolkit on canvas. So through that link. Some of them are free. So you can see some of those links and again, those will be available. It's a great way to, you know, as you self-reflect, as you think about what you enjoy and what you, what you can do. It's a good way to kind of provide you with some really strong language to be able to articulate that. Within our office, we also, and your college career office does oftentimes as well, we do the CliftonStrengths, SkillScan, and skills, skills card sort as well. I'll just say that these are really based, a lot of them are based on that positive psychology. So it's, it's good and helps you feel a little bit more confident about what you do, what energizes you, what kind of influences your direction. Jess mentioned this in the beginning of the workshop. So if you're struggling at all with any, kind of answering some of those questions that Jess mentioned, like, what are you good at or what are some of the clubs and organizations you've been drawn to? These can also be a great development tool to help you again identify, but also articulate what you do well. And it often is applied not only to career, but also your personal life and your academic life. So it's a nice, holistic way to, to represent who you are. In one way. Any questions at all about the skills? I know we'll address those, but feel free to submit questions in the chat and we'll address them at the end. Next we want to take about, talk about values. They're also, can be considered needs, but values bring purpose, meaning, excitement to your life. Usually they're motivating and they, we rely on them to make decisions. So when values are satisfied, it creates joy, but you can get, have discontent when they're not satisfied. So values can be internal or external, extrinsic or external examples would be like salary, good working conditions, advancement. More internal would be a sense of achievement, responsibility, kind of giving back. So if you identify your values that can help you narrow your options. So some questions that are really values questions would be, what kind of life do you want to have? How much of a role is work going to play specifically in what that looks like for you? Is your work going to satisfy moral or ethical values or contribute to society as that's something that's going to shape what kind of major or career or choices that you make. So now we have another little bit of ways to classify different values and kind of larger buckets. So it it's achievement that you really value, that might mean you're results oriented, like options, opportunities to use your abilities. You like to be considered an expert. You like that intellectual challenge. Maybe for independence, you really like working on your own, making your own decisions, exhibiting some creativity, having that responsibility, and maybe some entrepreneurship as well. Recognition is kind of being recognized for your work, prestige, social status. Building up to leadership. Relationships can be with others. So obviously, coworkers or kind of customer serving relationships, maybe you prefer a non-competitive environment. You like social service. Support refers to kind of the, the support of the environment around you. So management, company policies, supervision, HR, are they kind of there to have your back? And then working conditions would be things like job security, the stimulus around you, compensation, benefits, promotions. Is there variety? Do you want variety? Is there structure? Is it too fast-paced or too slow? Kind of, how are the working conditions going to shape whether or not you want to stay in the job or even apply for it. So in a second we're going to try another poll here, but the activity is, which job would you pick? Option a. The salary is 33,000 It's a smaller company of 100 workers. Short commute, you're working mostly with team, team-based projects. The company as a whole is 50% women and minorities and it's got an excellent reputation. Option B over here, you would make substantially more, 45,000, the company has 1000 workers, longer commute. The work is more independent, maybe more autonomy. The company composition is about 5% women and minorities, and the reputation of the company is a little more mixed. So think about those, and we will launch poll number two. So when it shows up on your screen, vote for which one you would do. Now, consider. You must accept one of them. Each offer involves the same exact job duties. And the idea is you would have to stick with your decision for a minimum of five years. Should have said that before you started voting, but there it is. I'll give you another minute or two. Well, honestly Jess, sometimes you get this information up front. And so you really do need to think about some of those other questions that you just shared, to ask that employer. So you have a better understanding and make a more informed decision. Going to end the poll. So you can see the results here. But it's slightly more in favor of option a with the lower salary, smaller company, shorter commute. There's no right answer here. It wasn't a trick. The point is that you're each going to make this based on your own set of values, systems or needs or circumstances. But also I bet some questions occurred to you, so, you know, what else would you want to know? Oh, well, I could handle mostly independent work if I had a really good supervisor, that'll clue you, oh, supervision really matters to me. As, as we think about values. How did you decide to attend Cornell? We'll jump back for a second. You know, was it the conditions of the university? Was it the financial aid package that they gave you? Was it reputation or prestige or was it where your family members went, or your friends? So how you make decisions shows up in your value system and they influence each other. Sometimes people are unaware. So the more intentional effort you put into seeing those connections, you can kinda use it as a really quick trick to make future decisions. Should I do a minor? Oh, well, it's going to help with advancement in my career. I've really thought through it. This is like the perfect opportunity for me versus you'll be really confident in that decision if you weight it with your values and your larger goals. Great. Value origins and conflicts. So values, where do they come from? From family, from culture, in some ways, from the, from the media. In your own past experiences, good or negative. So the kind of question is, where, where do your values come from? And then there's the question of what if my values don't align with each other? So maybe you have an internal conflict. You know, I want to, I want to earn a good living, but I also want a career that gives back, well, lots of the non-profit sector positions don't pay as high as some of the more corporate positions. So you have sort of an internal conflict there to work out. Doesn't mean it's impossible. But it might, there might be fewer opportunities that are going to match both of those values. There could be external conflicts. One we heard recently was someone got a job offer, but it was at the current epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak. And they valued their mom's opinion and mom just was not comfortable with that, with moving to that location in the middle of a pandemic. So there's very real conflicts that can arise from these decision-making, and those are just two examples. So the other part is, come talk to career services. It can be helpful to just hear an unbiased party to help you, ask you more in-depth questions so you work out, you know, what's coming up for you and how to, additional factors to help make that decision. What if work doesn't satisfy my values? There are a couple sort of strategies here. One might be changing the job from within. Can you ask for new responsibilities that you find more interesting or challenging? Can you kind of form a cohort of people or co-workers who do value the same thing and, and get that satisfaction that way. Can you, based on what doesn't satisfy your values, can you find a new job? You know, what was good about the old one? What's your ideal one? How do I move to the next step? Seek additional experiences. So basically this option is outside of the work setting, can you volunteer? Can you do part-time work? Is there another way to not leave your job but still get more satisfaction for your values. So here is a link to another one it's called the work importance profiler. And at Cornell, we have in-person values assessments that we do. We don't have very many options if you want to do on an electronic version, but you can make an appointment and we can definitely talk through ways to interpret that. Pause there to see if there are any other questions so far. Keep putting them in the chat if you have them. Some other inventories that we have in career services include the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, MBTI. That's kind of one that a lot of people have heard of. We also have a lesser known one called the Career decision-making difficulties questionnaire, CDTQ. This one can be beneficial if you're feeling stuck and you're not able to move past it, it kinda pinpoints where's the, where's the difficulty coming from? Is it, you don't have enough information about possible to great things you could do with your major. Or there's sort of just a general distress level that's impacting your ability to make any decisions. We have others that we can talk to you about. But basically, if you want to take any of these, the way we do it at Cornell is, make an appointment with Cornell career services. We have links to that on later slides. Usually you just have a quick conversation with like Heather or myself to talk about, what do you hope to get out of it? What are your current kind of questions that you hope to answer through taking an inventory? Then you do the instructions. You have an interpretation appointment that's an hour or longer where you really go through the report page by page to make sense of it all. So let's bring it all together. As we've been talking today, hopefully you've been thinking about your own values, interests, and skills. Did you notice any patterns or things that make sense to you? Oh, well I picked my major because it really aligns with this, this, and this. As you continue to do these online self-reflection assessments or just kind of your own thinking process, share the results, talk to friends or family members, professors to get additional ideas or feedback or information about careers. And start to explore which careers fit your own unique combination of values, interests, and skills. I want to emphasize that again because people tend to compare themselves like Heather was just saying. So two people could be in the exact same major, sub major, everything for very different reasons. So the more you think about what makes me unique, how do I stand out, that's going to help you for every step moving forward. O*NET. O*NETs a website that we will give you the link to, it's for the occupational information network. But here it really breaks down lots of different jobs and the tasks that's involved. The knowledge, the interests, and the work values. There are separate categories describing those in addition to other helpful information. So this is a really good tool online you can use to continue with the career exploration piece. Here's the link to O*NET. But, so your next step is going to be to take what you've learned to keep exploring majors and potential careers. So these are just a small fraction of the tips that you could use, but exploring on the internet, reading profiles of people in different careers, what educational path did they have? What do they talk about in terms of their interests, values and skills? Talk to other people, conduct information interviews, and get personalized career coaching for your exact questions. It can also be really helpful to keep a record of your ideas. The research that you're doing, the more organized you are now, the more helpful it will be to continually refer to or add when you gather new information. And I'll just add one thing too, that I think there's a lot of pressure in terms of just having, knowing exactly the job or career or industry. And the honest truth is that because you will have lots of different changes as you go through your professional degree or a professional career. Try to think of it like, you know, not just. Career, but careers or career paths. Even if it's not the, this is what I do right after college. It could be what I do after five years out of college or ten years out of college. The more information that you have right now, it's going to really help influence that direction. And it could, it could honestly expose you to opportunities that you never even considered. So it can be really fun. I know a lot of times, there's some stress involved because of that question. That we've been asked since we were like five years old, like what do you want to do when you grow up? And now it's going to be, what are you gonna do after you graduate from Cornell? Keep that in mind of career opportunities versus just one career. And as Jess was saying, talking to people and hearing what their career paths were, can really influence what, what options you have for yourself as well. Really great points, Thanks Heather. Our next few slides are about goal setting. If you remember back to that career development wheel, the last part of the understand yourself component was setting a goal. So you've all set goals before in your life, maybe personal things, life, health, family, and relationships, spiritual. And as I'm sure you know, goals have subgoals. So really think about what are my short and long-term career goals. That's another popular interview question, right? Think about if your goals have changed at all lately, a lot of things were kind of upended with the, with the pandemic. Maybe you no longer like your industry as much as you did, or maybe your value system changed, which, which meant that your goals or major or career options had to change shape. And think through what, what new skills do you want to develop? So one thing we love is SMART goals. That stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timely, or time bound. And so the idea is when it comes to understanding yourself, you know, what do you want to do? How are you going to know when you've achieved it? Is it in your power to achieve it? We want to set a realistic, reasonable goal. And when exactly do you want to accomplish it? So, you know, if the goal is, I want to get a summer internship. What does that mean? What kind of internship do you want? Measurable. How do you know when you've achieved it? Well, you have the offer and you've signed it, right? Is it in your power? Probably, but you're going to have to put some effort into it. So what does that look like? Break it down into subgoals. Oh, I need to go to the career fair. I need to sign up for Handshake. I need to get my resume and cover letter reviewed. I need to practice, do a practice interview or attend some workshops on how to network. So there's plenty of sub-steps you can do that are measurable. So the goal you've set of, oh no, what am I doing this summer doesn't seem so scary, but it feels manageable. So please come and see us, Career Services. We're open Monday through Friday, 8:00 to 4:30. You can call this number if you want to make an appointment or you can do it through bookings with our link here. We have appointments for different kinds of things. Today we've been emphasizing advising, exploration, and assessment, but we help with all sorts of different career-related questions. As do each of your college offices, if you'd rather go there. That's perfectly wonderful too. I want to mention other workshops that you might be interested in, and these are coming up in the month of October. We've gotten an alumni panel tonight. Help with getting started on the internship search, considering grad school. CUeLINKS and networking with Cornell and as well as the rescheduled dates for the two career fairs are now officially open.