week 1
Self-Awareness and Career Success (graded)
Why is understanding yourself important in your career development? How can you ensure that an employer will realize that you have a clear grasp of who you are and what you have to offer?
week 2
Job-Hunting Techniques (graded)
The prospect of searching for a job can be very intimidating. What techniques have you used in the past when you were job hunting? Which ones were most effective? Least effective? What do you attribute their effectiveness (or lack of effectiveness) to?
week 3
week 5
Preparing for Your Interviews (graded)
Experts will tell you that it is important to prepare for an interview. What type of preparation could and should you do?
week 6
Responding to Interview Questions (graded)
Once you have a resum é that gets noticed by employers, the next step in securing the job that you want is to interview successfully. The key to interviewing successfully is your ability to respond appropriately and well to the questions asked during the interview. Pick three questions from the following list (Martucci Lamarre, 2006, p. 121) and tell us how you would respond to them.
Tell me something about yourself.
Why should I hire you?
What are your strengths?
What are your weaknesses?
Why are you applying for this position?
How are you qualified for this position?
Why are you interested in working for our firm?
What can you contribute to this company?
What are your short-term goals?
What are your long-term goals?
The “Hidden” Job Market (graded)
Although estimates vary, it is suggested that 80% or more of the job openings that exist are in the hidden job market. What is the difference between the publishedjob market and the hidden job market? What techniques would you usually use to access the published job market? What techniques would you use to access the hidden job market?
week 4
Marketing Yourself (graded)
In Career Focus: A Personal Job Search Guide, Martucci Lamarre (2006) suggests that if we want to realize our job dreams, we need to think about ourselves as products to be marketed, and in order to do this, we need to contextualize ourselves within the five Ps of marketing: product, price, place, presentation, and promotion (p. 4). Please reflect and respond to the following questions taken from our textbook.
What exactly is your product and how is it different from (or better than) other similar products?
Where will you sell your product?
Who are the potential buyers of the product and how does that price compare to similar products being offered?
How will you let others know about your product, and how will you develop its presentation to appropriate markets?
week 7
Evaluating a Job Offer (graded)
Review the Criteria for Evaluating a Job Offer on pages 138139 in the textbook. What are your top two criteria out of each of the four basic areas? Why did you choose these criteria?
week 2
Self-Assessment (due in this Week)
In Week 1, you should have completed the following assessments from your textbook.
Marketing Readiness Quiz (pp. 816)
Self-Awareness Checklist (pp. 1617)
Ability Assessment (pp. 1719)
Transferable Skills Checklist (pp. 1920)
Work Environment and Life Preferences (pp. 2021)
Self-Assessment Summary Sheet (pp. 2122)
You will be using these results to prepare your Self-Assessment assignment that is due this week.
The assignment template and grading rubric are available in Doc Sharing. Save the template file by adding your last name to the template filename (e.g. Week2_Self-Assessment_Template_Smith.docx). Be sure to proofread and spell check your work before you submit it.
week 4
Career and Company Research (due this week)
Now that you have identified some career-related goals, it’s time to match those goals to potential employers. In this assignment, you will investigate companies based on those goals, and you will also spend some time thinking about how you will market yourself to those employers.
The assignment template and grading rubric are available in Doc Sharing. Save the template file by adding your last name to the template filename (e.g. Week4_Career_Company_Research_Template_Smith.docx). Be sure to proofread and spell check your work before you submit it.
week 5
Cover and Thank You Letters (due this week)
Find a job ad for a position you would be interested in once you graduate. Write a targeted cover letter responding to the ad.
Assume you were given the opportunity to interview for the position. Write a post-interview thank you letter to the employer.
Submit your cover and thank you letters and the job ad to the dropbox.
week 7
Interview Questions (due this week)
Below you will find a list of potential interview questions. It is possible that you could be asked some of these exact questions during an interview. Choose 7 questions from Group A and 3 questions from Group B, for a total of 10. Your responses to the questions in Group B should have three parts. Respond to these using Martucci Lamarre’s (2006) B.A.R. (background, action(s), results) framework (p. 124). Respond to the questions as you would during an interview and provide as complete an answer as possible for each one.
Group A: Standard Questions (Choose 7 questions from this group, from p. 121).
Tell me something about yourself.
Why should I hire you?
What are your strengths?
What are your weaknesses?
Why are you applying for this position?
How are you qualified for this position?
Why are you interested in working for our firm?
What can you contribute to this company?
What are your short-term goals?
What are your long-term goals?
Group B: Behavior-Based Questions (Choose 3 questions from this group, from p. 124).
Tell me about a difficult situation you dealt with when supervising others. What did you do, and what were the results?
Describe a time when you had to use your best oral communication skills. What was the situation, and what was the outcome?
Describe a time when you had to adjust to change. How did you cope?
Explain a role you filled as a group or team member.
We all face disappointments in life. Tell me about a time when you had to handle disappointment or rejection.
Describe a situation that required you to show initiative.
Tell me about a time when someone made an unreasonable request of you. How did you react, and what happened?
Describe a time when you were most frustrated or discouraged in reaching your objectives or goals. How did it turn out?
Describe the last time that you did something that went beyond what was expected in work or school.
Tell me about a difficult challenge or problem you’ve faced and how you handled it.
The grading rubric for this assignment is available in Doc Sharing. Be sure to proofread and spell check your work before you submit it.
The grading rubric is also available below: