College Success Leads to Career Success
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In this chapter we’ve talked a lot about connections — between self-knowledge and your success, between a positive attitude and meeting your goals, and between embracing your strengths and weaknesses and growing as a learner. But another type of connection is equally important to your future: the connection between college and career. The skills, attitudes, and behaviors you’re developing in class will be just as valuable in the working world. It’s the ultimate two-for-one deal: When you invest in your education, you also succeed at work.
Take critical thinking. Not only is it important to your academic success and your self-knowledge, but it’s also something employers look for in potential hires.13 Critical thinking is known as a transferable skill because it’s useful in many different settings — not just school. Attitudes and behaviors — including motivation, resilience, personal responsibility, and self-efficacy beliefs — can also be transferable. According to surveys, many of the skills you’re building in college and in this class are valued by employers — including communicating, working in teams, making decisions, and staying organized.14
Transferable Skills: Skills that can be applied in many different settings, such as work, home, and school.
We’ll discuss transferable skills in more detail throughout this book, and you’ll see how the skills you develop in school will serve you well in your chosen profession. To get you started, Table 1.3 shows how specific skills might transfer from one environment to another. Whether you’re sure of your career path now or are still considering your options, building skills like these will help you succeed in your career — whatever it turns out to be.
| Skill | Application at school | Application at work |
|---|---|---|
| Goal setting | Decide to meet with your instructor during office hours at least once a week | Decide to improve your on-time arrival at weekly staff meetings |
| Communication | Deliver a well-researched presentation to your history class | Deliver a presentation explaining employee health benefits to your team |
| Critical thinking | Gather facts supporting the argument in your essay | Review a patient’s medical data to determine how a new medication would interact with his current medications |
| Personal responsibility | Recognize that your low test score may have resulted from not studying enough | Take responsibility for submitting a report too late, and develop strategies to better manage your time |
| Teamwork | Complete a small-group experiment in your biology lab | Work with representatives from other branch offices to prepare a regional sales report |
| Listening | Pay attention to your instructor’s comments and classmates’ questions | Consider the concerns expressed by a high school student’s parents about courses you’ve recommended for her senior year |
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voices of experience: employee
PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY
IN THE WORKPLACE
| NAME: | Chris Cline |
| PROFESSION: | Creative Services Director |
| SCHOOL: | Modesto Junior College |
| DEGREE: | Associate of Arts |
| MAJOR: | Graphic Communications |
“As the newspaper industry continues to change, I feel confident that I’m prepared to adapt.”
In my job as Creative Services Director for a local newspaper publishing group, I oversee the graphics production for our printed publications and manage our newspaper’s Internet presence. The newspaper industry is facing tremendous upheaval right now, with shrinking revenue from ads and competition from free content online. There’s a lot of pressure to adapt, particularly on the digital side of the industry.
I’ve had to face these same challenges in my career, needing to continually develop technology skills for a changing workplace. I’ve always been confident in my computer skills, but I didn’t know much about building Web sites when I graduated, as most of my educational training was print-based. I needed to build up those digital skills to succeed in the evolving newspaper business.
It took several months of self-directed learning on the job, but eventually I reached my goal: I created our newspaper’s Web site without hiring an outside consulting firm. Not only did this save our company a substantial amount of money; it also helped me to further my own career. Now, as the newspaper industry continues to change, I feel confident that I’m prepared to adapt.
YOUR TURN: If you have a job now or have had one in the past, did you take personal responsibility for using your strengths and addressing your weaknesses? If so, how? What happened as a result?
FOR DISCUSSION: The idea of transferable skills is usually easy for students to grasp, but difficult for them to apply. Talk with them about their current classes, and ask them to identify the skills they’re learning. Then give specific examples of how these skills would apply to the world of work.
ACTIVITY: Using the list of skills in Table 1.3, ask students to write down an example of a time when they transferred one or more of these skills from a school to a work (or other non-school) setting.