🎯 Capstone Project: Interest Survey and Career Goal Project B

You may have an idea of what you think you want to do for a career, or you may have no idea of what you want to do for a career.  Most of the time, our ideas of what we want to do have a lot to do with our outside influences, like many people follow in their parents' footsteps, some people decide on a career because of a class they had or a teacher that impacted them.  However, it is important to try to find a career that fits your personality and interests.  In this project, you will take an interest profile survey to help determine your interests and careers that fit that interest.  There are many interest surveys, personality profiles and other methods to help you find the best career fit for you.  For this project you will be doing the O*Net Interest Profiler, which is one of the most common surveys used to help people find a career. After doing the interest profiler, you will complete a goal setting activity to help you determine your personal and career goals. Then you will have information from your goals and interests to help you determine a career that fits your personal interests and goals.  Try to keep an open mind and don't answer the way you THINK you should in order to get the result you think you want.

**If you did this project in the A part of the course, then you need to contact your teacher for an alternative career survey to take. 

Part 1:

1. Take the O*Net Interest Profiler Web-based version Links to an external site. (or the alternative assessment provided by your teacher*)
2. Take a screenshot of your results. You will have a score for each of 6 characteristics: Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising and Conventional. See the image below for an example:
3. Find your top category, if you have 2 categories that are very close in score, take your top 2 categories. Click on the link to the category(s) on the right to read a brief summary of that characteristic.  You'll notice that 3 categories are bolded, those are your 3 strongest characteristics, you should try to find a career that fits those characteristics. In the image, the person has an EIC interest profile.
4. Click on "Next" to determine your "Job Zone". Decide how much education you want to pursue; do you want to go to college? You need to determine if you want to start a career right out of high school, get some technical or community college (2 years), get a college degree (4 years), or get an advanced degree (Master's or Doctorate).  Choose your job zone.
5. Continue to click "Next" to get to the careers that fit you. Review the choices, choose a career.  If you don't see a career that interests you on the list, go back to either the job zone or the interests to see if you have a different set of career choices with a different set of answers.
6. Once you've chosen the career you think you'd most like to pursue, click on "Print" and save the career information as a PDF. Write 2 paragraphs about the career, what you like about the career, and how you plan to prepare for this career.

*For the alternative test – find your results and take a screenshot or screenshots if necessary.  Also find career that fit your results type.  Do the results differ from the original results you got from the O*Net test? Write your 2 paragraphs based on the results from the alternative and your thoughts.

Part 2: Goal Setting

Now that you have chosen a career to research and use throughout the remainder of the course, we will start working on your career portfolio.  Goal setting is very important, it is more likely that you will reach your goals if you are specific with them, and you write them down.  You can refer back to your goals and update them as you gain experience and change.  For your goal setting, we will use SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timely) goal setting. SMART goals are used in many businesses, as well in academics.  They help you to focus on the things that you will need to do to meet your goals and to be able to know when you have reached your goals.  Using the PDF attached, make 10 SMART academic and career goals.  Each goal must be SMART.  You need at least 2 goals to be achieved within the next 2 years, you need at least 2 goals to be achieved within the next 3-5 years and at least 2 goals achieved in 6-10 years. Make sure that each goal is specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and has a specific time to be achieved by. If you need more assistance with SMART goal setting, you can research it online as there are many resources for this type of goal setting.

Deliverables:

1. Turn in the O*Net Interest Profiler screenshot.
2. Turn in the career choice paragraphs (on a word processing document).
3. Turn in your 10 SMART goals.

*If you took the alternative assessment, turn in your information for it and your paragraphs.  Make any changes to your SMART goals from the A course and feedback from your A course teacher.