WEEK 2 – At a Glance

Announcements: Oncourse and Career Services (USCO)

Lecture Evaluation

Reading Assignments:

Chapters 3, 4, 5, 13, 20

Lab 2 Counseling Session:

Review Projects

Lecture 3:

Intro to Career Options:

Ø      Management/Marketing

Ø      Finance

Ø      Technical

Projects:

P1: UCSO Resume (Resume review) - Required

P2: Career Plan - Required

Lecture 4:

SCOOP #1

X420 Lecture Schedule

SCOOP: Schedule  /  Description

Discussion Sessions Schedule

 

Lecture 3: Career Options Introduction / Management & Marketing / Finance / Technical

What is available? Setting smart, concrete goals requires information about potential options. The government job classification scheme identifies over 50,000 related job families. No one could analyze each cluster, but you can make intelligent choices by narrowing the field after your self-assessment.

 

Career exploration is a systematic process of elimination and inclusion based on your values, interests, personal qualities, and skills. A flexible scheme allows a slowly emerging career profile that integrates job market realities such as compensation, growth potential, supply/demand, work settings, job requirements, etc. with the self-assessment. The result is a roughly tuned set of career directions.

Lecture 3 Topics (within career areas of Accounting/Finance, Marketing/Management, and Technical and Technology Consulting):

Ø      World of Work: What’s Available?

Ø      Career Profiles: Fits My Background?

Ø      Information Collection: Job Descriptions

Ø      Supply/Demand: Job Possibilities?

Ø      Systematic Analysis: Best Fit?

Ø      Growth Rates: Future Outlook

Ø      People Sources/Contacts: Networking Options

Ø      Job Performance Facts: My Potential?

Ø      Publication and Web Sources: More Info?

Ø      Career Resources: Job Details

Ø      Dollars and “Sense”: Earnings Potentials?

Ø      Salary Determinants: Realistic Expectations

In what type of organization do you want to work? Business, government, education, and nonprofit sectors of an economy each provide a variety of unique cultures. Employing organizations often recruit talent with common attitudes and credentials. Even with the most strongly autocratic institution, there are pockets of participative management units. To avoid anarchy, every organization employs a management structure of professional talent. You need to understand where you fit within the group and where your level of responsibility falls.

 

Upward mobility typically follows a planned advancement path dictated by established performance standards. Regardless of the type of employing organization (sector or size), aspiring professionals typically seek employment in marketing, finance, operations, engineering, research, or general administration functions.

 

Most business-related career opportunities are found in three general areas: marketing/management, financial, and technical fields. Early career work experiences in business firms often rotate potential managers through a series of assignments (including the entry assignment). These assignments entail work experiences in the following areas:

 

Management/Marketing:

Mgmt. Development Programs

Sales Management

Retailing

Buying/Purchasing

Marketing Research

Product Management

 

Financial:

Industrial Accounting

Banking

Public Accounting

Financial Analysis

Real Estate

Credit Analysis

 

Technical:

Consulting

Operations Management

Decision Technology

Computing Science

Systems Analysis

Information Systems

 

For this lecture you must decide which of these three areas you would be more interested in exploring. An expert in each area will discuss your job possibilities.

 

The financial group will meet in one room, the marketing/management group will meet in another room, and students with technical interests will meet in the third room, all at the same time. You can receive credit for attending only one session, but you are invited to attend more than one at a different time if you are not certain of your career plans.

 

Check the Oncourse website announcements for room locations.

 

Lecture 4: SCOOP SESSION #1

The next five classes consist of special sessions. Each year over 100 executives participate in Business X420 by discussing career opportunities in their industry or occupation. These guest lecturers represent alumni and many employers who recruit on campus. The information that they provide adds to the career information that you need in the career decision-making process. Each guest makes a 17- to 20-minute presentation as part of a 3- to 4-member panel. Check the Oncourse website announcements or UCSO SCOOP Schedule for which companies will be attending and for room locations. There may be last minute changes from employers which will always be posted on the door of the main lecture rooms.

 

Each class is divided into separate rooms, one or two of which is oriented towards finance and accounting, one towards systems and operations (technical), and one or two with a management/marketing (non-technical) orientation. You may elect to attend any of these at your regular class time and receive points to be applied towards your course grade. You may attend extra sessions for points as long as you attend at your assigned class time for one of the sessions. You may leave a resume with each presenter; however, classes meet back-to-back so very little personal question time is available to talk to the presenters.

 

The SCOOP sessions meet for five class periods. Go to the program that best meets your career interests.

 

Lab Counseling Session – Lab 2

General Project Directions:

Ø      Send projects as an attachment via Oncourse Messenger Email to your Career Counselor.

Ø      Send to your Career Counselor before your lab appointment.

Ø      Bring a copy with you to the appointment so your Career Counselor can mark on it with you present.

Ø      Counselor will grade, sign, and return at your appointment time for verification.

Ø      Save your projects. They could be useful to you later. Be prepared to make an oral presentation to your counselor on your project.

 

Follow project directions carefully. See full descriptions of projects in project section.

Project: Project 1 – Resume Review

 

You must attend your assigned lab session to discuss required Project 1: The Resume. Your resume will be graded during this lab counseling session. (A regular 20-minute lab appointment time was assigned to you in Lab 1.)

 

Please bring a printed copy of your resume with you to this lab. You are welcomed to bring other versions of your resume also. Most students have a recruitment resume (UCSO is the best example) and a networking resume (used with references and other career partners).

 

Career Resources (UCSO) / Career Links (on Oncourse)

Ø      Use textbook and at least two different websites as a resource for your projects.

Ø      Many career-related websites follow your textbook Table of Contents structure.

Ø      The UCSO Career Resources also provides links to helpful research resources.

Ø      Career Links is a more extensive list of research websites.

 

Project 2: Career Plan - REQUIRED

Always number this as Project 2, not by the number of projects you have turned in.

Overview: Required Project (see full descriptions of projects in project section)

This course is designed to help you in your current job search and to provide you with skills for career planning and future job changes. This project gives you an opportunity to familiarize yourself with what the course has to offer, and to strategize about how you can use what you learn in this course to your advantage. While there is no requirement for you to carry out all of the plans you outline in this project, it will help to guide you through the semester and your career search.

 

The goal of this project is to help you define your job search plans by identifying various methods of job searching and determining which you think you will employ. It will also help you explore how you will make practical use of what you have learned in this course to help you reach your career search goals. Completing this project will get you to look ahead, complete the Project Planning Form, and lay the foundation for your final project, the Career Portfolio.

 

What projects will you be completing? You need to focus your efforts on preparation of weekly projects which, when reviewed at the end of the course, logically flow into your Career Portfolio. Your Career Portfolio will probably be reviewed and revised many times after you leave this course as, over time, you develop and refine your long-term strategic career plans.

 

If you have already made an employment decision, you can see how the career management part of your long-term goals can be enhanced by selecting appropriate projects that best fit your on-the-job or graduate student needs.

 

You are welcome to modify the project description (if approved in advance) to better fit your unique career interests.

 

NOTE: Project 2 must be turned in on Week 2 and will be discussed at your Week 3 lab session.

Project Instructions:

Actual project instructions are located in the Projects Section of the syllabus.

 

Discussion Sessions

The 75-minute Discussion sessions begin at 5:30 p.m. and one will repeat at 7:00 p.m. Some programs may be shown at 5:30 p.m. only. Please follow the Discussion Schedule located both in Oncourse and linked from the UCSO website (from the Workshop page) for dates and room numbers.

 

Over 40 different topics will be offered in Weeks 2 through 8. Most, but not all, discussion topics are repeated on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

 

Foreign national students are strongly encouraged to attend a specially-designed set of discussion topics every Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. only. Foreign nationals face some unique employment problems due to Visa issues. Assistance in discussion moderation comes from UCSO staff, the I.U. International Student Services Office, and foreign national alumni who occasionally share their past experiences in the employment market.

 

The numbers listed before the name of each program is the actual number which you need to mark on your evaluation card for credit.