Planning for Your Career

1. Filling the Gaps in Your Education, Skills, and Experience

After you’ve made a thoughtful, informed decision about your career path—including research into the education, skills, and experience required to get a job and succeed in the field—it’s time to devise a plan for filling in the gaps in your transcript and résumé. What courses do you need to take to develop the skills your chosen career demands? What steps can you take outside of the classroom to put you on your way to becoming a good candidate for a position in your field when the opportunity arises?

big idea

Certain factors that will determine whether you get the job you want after graduation will be beyond your control, so you want to make sure that you are doing all that you can to satisfy those factors that are within your control. By doing a little research—talking with advisors and people in the field you are targeting, looking at job and internship postings, doing anything you can to gather relevant information—you can gain a good sense of which items are on the résumés of successful candidates for the job you want and work your way toward being able to put those items on your own résumé.

try it

You may already have a particular career path in mind. If you do have one, do a quick web search to look at the skills and experience listed in a job posting for an entry-level position in the field. What skills, knowledge, and experience do you already have that will serve you well in this role? What new skills, knowledge, and experience will you need to obtain before you are qualified for this role?