Arts Career Space - Exploration

Using Sense-making and Meaning-making for Career decision-making!

Sense-making is the ability to make sense of our external world; and the dynamically shifting challenges available in the world of work.  Meaning-making is the ability to relate to our inner world; understanding our values and interests.  Both are essential to informed decision-making throughout your career.

As an Arts student, you are a pollinator. Your career possibilities have far-reaching potential to contribute with an interdisciplinary lens and offer a diversity of thought.

Your undergraduate degree is a foundation from which to build a meaningful career, by making sense of what and how you want to contribute to the world of work you can assess and plan what skills and experience to seek,  and areas of expertise to pursue, through additional education, that will empower your career growth. 

An academic career offers opportunities to explore sense-making and meaning-making through experimentation; of new experiences, knowledge acquisition and transfer, social-emotional growth, strength building, and skill development. 

While a student, make time to learn more about who you are.

• Explore and test your interests, what brings meaning to you? 
• Uncover and grow your strengths, they are what make you uniquely you!
• Name and understand your values and their power as a sense-making tool!

Building self-awareness will foster your confidence and make navigating your career pathways much easier.
 

The Career Challenge Mindset

The world is in a constant state of change; there are infinite opportunities to solve problems and create opportunities.

Learn to think like an employer, understand their purpose, their impact, their challenge. All organizations are solving problems or creating opportunities, usually through a product or service. Career exploration is about seeking industries and employers tackling challenges that interest you.  Career development is about building your strengths, skills, and knowledge with purpose.

A job title is too small a context to align with a career. To understand how to grow and navigate the life-long journey a career offers, first seek meaningful challenge(s) you want to work on. By aligning your career to a challenge that is meaningful to you. When you do this, you open yourself up to many job titles and possibilities for building your career.
 

Fostering a Career Challenge Mindset

For decades, career exploration models have used a trait and match assessment model that helps an individual pick a job title. This approach no longer works; there are too many job titles to choose from and they continue to change and grow. 

Disruptors are changing the way we live and work. We have become more globalized and increasingly focused on sustainability. Technology continues to shift how we structure our personal and professional lives.

Instead of aligning yourself with the identity of a job title - teacher, therapist, or lawyer - align yourself with the work a job title does - who are you helping, how are you serving, what knowledge are you using, and where are you.

To seek a meaningful challenge(s) learn more about the problems to be solved, the organization(s) tackling these problems, their needs, and the interesting people working on your challenge.

When you find interesting people, you will find the job titles and the variety of pathways to your great job.