Career Presentations

Career planning foundations

Many students come to IUPUI to prepare for a career, but have few or no concrete plans. This interactive session demonstrates the importance of setting major and career exploration goals now. Students will be able to identify personal traits to consider and will understand career exploration using information, people resources, and their own experiences. This presentation is ideal for introducing career planning to students (25–30 minutes).

FOCUS results

The FOCUS assessment, our free online assessment tool, can help students better articulate their values, interests, skills, and personality traits and can assist students in making connections between that information and major and career options that might be a good fit for their unique characteristics.

In this presentation, we discuss the purpose and benefits of assessments in career planning, provide insights into students’ results, and demonstrate how the instrument can be used as a resource for additional career exploration. You may choose to play this FOCUS overview video to introduce how to navigate FOCUS prior to students taking the assessment. 

Students should use the FOCUS assignment to complete the assessment and begin processing on their own prior to this presentation (30–45 minutes or based on time available).

Networking and informational interviews

Encourage students to get the inside scoop on careers by speaking to people in their fields. People connections are a vital part of career exploration and planning. Students will learn what networking is, who is in their network, and how they can grow their network and make professional connections. This presentation also teaches students the power of informational interviewing and how to use this form of networking to learn about occupations, positions, and organizations. We discuss how and where to find contacts, what to ask, and the importance of following up. This presentation can accompany the informational interviewing major career resource guide (30–45 minutes).

Parallel planning for health care majors

Parallel planning is an expectation for all students entering health and life science fields. Most students don’t know about the wide variety of majors and careers available to them in the health care arena and developing a parallel plan early in their college careers ensures that students have explored all of their options and that they have targeted majors for which they will be both engaged in and admissible to. This presentation covers the importance of parallel planning and exposes students to available resources for developing a parallel plan. The parallel planning major career resource guide can be used to accompany this presentation (30–40 minutes).

Fun with career games

While formal presentations are great, sometimes everyone needs a change of pace. Let us facilitate fun career-related games that sneak learning in along the way! Choices include:

Majors for Humanity
Like Cards Against Humanity, Majors for Humanity is a hilariously fun game! It exposes students to those majors that can solve problems in today’s society. Students are encouraged to think outside the box and make a case for why the major they choose from their cards is the one to offer the skills and abilities to solve the problem presented.

Career Taboo
Just like in Taboo, Career Taboo has words you cannot say. Students take turns in describing a career without using the obvious words to describe it so others can guess the career. A student has one minute to get through as many careers as they can. Each guessed card is a point for the team, the team that ends with the most points wins! Students will then create a description of their preferred career without using the job title and sharing with other players to see if anyone can guess it.

Major Taboo
Just like in Taboo, Major Taboo has words you cannot say. Students take turns in describing a major without using the obvious words to describe it so others can guess the major. A student has one minute to get through as many majors as they can. Each guessed card is a point for the team, the team that ends with the most points wins! Students will then create a description of their preferred career without using any names of majors and sharing with other players to see if anyone can guess it. In addition, there is a one-minute challenge for students to list as many of the majors at IUPUI as they can think of.

Values Card Sort
This activity helps students prioritize what is important to them to see in their future careers. Most students haven’t thought of how their values and ethics fit with the career path they’ve set out on. This allows students to place these in order of what is most important and not so important for them personally. Discussions will encourage students to think about how they can use this list to make informed decisions.