The class presentations were very applicable and interesting. I thought the elementary school group was most applicable as I look forward to possibly working with that age group in schools. The fact that the girls in the group were in character (dressing up, doing experiments) was great especially for that age group. As I think about career development in elementary school being more of an introduction I thought the activities the group presented were very appropriate and would keep students engaged. As I look forward to presenting tonight in the middle school group, I hope that our activities will be just as engaging.
I was immediately interested in Brown (2012) Chapter 11 because of its relevance to my everyday job. As a graduate assistant in Experiential Learning and Career Management (ELCM) at Millersville, I have the opportunity to critique and see many students resumes on a daily basis. ELCM publishes a Job Search Handbook that we hand out to students each year, which is updated with current resume trends, suggestions, and many examples for different majors. The resume examples in the book looked very outdated to me. I would recommend, if I were critiquing them, using bulleted lists to describe experiences and keep them succinct, but detailed with transferrable skills. I also would suggest if it were a student I was working with to think about omitting the objective and adding a professional summary, which is a short paragraph “sales pitch” at the top of the resume. Dana also talked about this in her blog post. I agree that there is a lot of white space on the Chronological resume, which I would also recommend limiting. Finally, in working with college students, we recommend listing education first, especially if you’ve just recently graduated. However, your personal resume is always changing as you gain more experiences and list the most applicable information towards the top.
Brown (2012) presents two tables in Chapter 11 that give the most important variables in a job interview. I thought these tables were very interesting and provided great insight, especially since I have to conduct mock interviews as part of my job. With number one being overall oral communication skills on the College Recruiter’s Rankings, I wonder about the students who simply don’t like to talk that much. According to Brown (2012) the most accounted for problem is not providing enough information. I think that mock-interviews are very important in assisting students before their first job interviews.
Finally, in Brown (2012) Chapter 16, assessment and evaluation of career development programs is discussed. I liked this Chapter again because I could relate it to what we do to evaluate our services in ELCM. A lot of our evaluations are descriptive and quantitative. However, I believe we could really benefit from more qualitative designs, such as maybe doing focus groups for students who could benefit from our services. It seems that our method of evaluation works, but I think a lot of the numbers don't represent every student we come in contact with.
Brown, D. (2012). Career information, career counseling, and career development
(10th ed.). New York: Pearson Education, Inc.
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