You Can’t Eat Your Degree
Combine Your Passions and Philosophies to Create the Story of Your Future
Tricia Berry & Danielle Forget Shield
Smashwords ebook edition brought to you by Fideli Publishing Inc. & 825 Basics
© Copyright 2011, Tricia Berry and Danielle Forget Shield
No part of this eBook may be reproduced or shared by any electronic or mechanical means, including but not limited to printing, file sharing, and email, without prior written permission from Fideli Publishing and 825 Basics.
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Book artwork by Rick Marron Editing by Julie Freres Grady
ISBN: 978-1-60414-453-6 (ebook)
Contents
Danielle Forget Shield – Career and Life Lessons Learned
Tricia Berry — What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?
The Authentic, Genuine, Real You
Acknowledge Strengths and Weaknesses
Focus on a Detailed Perspective
What Are Your Five-Year Goals?
Acknowledgements
To all the college students we've worked with throughout the past 20 years — you've inspired us, laughed with us and taught us so much about how things continue to change while the basics stay the same.
Thank you to Cecilia Rose, one of Houston's premier executive career coaches, for her suggestions, guidance and inspiration and especially for the clever title of our book. Thank you to Rick Marron, the artist who created our artwork and flip cartoon graphics. And last, but certainly not least, to our editor, Julie Freres Grady whose suggestions greatly improve the delivery of our content.
Before we release our books, we ask a select group of people who are the target audience of the material to review our content. For this book we asked college students and parents of college students for their feedback. Thanks to Mark and Lynn Font, Jordan Keller, Diana Lindsey, Terra, Laura and Jennifer Richardson, Kathryn Sandhop and Linda Tatosian for helping us. We really appreciate your honest and candid feedback.
During our careers we've each had the benefit of an incredible group of BCFs (Best Career Friends). These people have supported us and given us the strength and drive to be better than we ever thought we could on our own. We're grateful for them and hope that you fill your future with people who do the same for you.
Introduction
College is a time for exploration, learning and personal growth. It's also a time to consider your career aspirations and investigate possible career paths. In college you pull from the past and engage in new experiences that help you envision your future. Your vision should include a script of your career story that will help guide your steps along your chosen career path.
Your career story incorporates your strengths, goals, passions and dreams. It is a description of who you are and what you want your future to look like. During college three opportunities you encounter over and over can shape your career story:
1. Ask classmates, professors, managers, alums and others already living it to tell you about their career paths so that you can learn about a wide variety of options. Two people may have the same degree, but very different experiences and career paths throughout college and after graduation.
2. Share information about yourself to give someone else the knowledge and desire to connect you with a potential career, job or other opportunity. You should consider and know how to respond to “Tell me about yourself to be prepared for opportunities when they arise, such as scholarship applications, job interviews, career fairs and networking events.
3. Determine if you are a good fit for a potential career, graduate school or workplace and if it's a good fit for you. Establishing whether a career path would be a good fit is one of the surest ways to achieve both career satisfaction and future success.
Without your story, it's very hard to pinpoint your next step toward your dream job or the perfect path for you. It's also quite difficult for the people who really want to help you find that perfect direction. You need to take charge of your career story — collect your own data, define your own script and communicate it strategically to chart your perfect path.
This book shows you how to use your college experiences as the first steps on your career path. You can't eat your degree. The piece of paper you are handed at graduation won't pay the bills or put food on your table, but how you use your degree to make the life you want can fulfill you in ways you perhaps never considered. Making a difference in our world can provide the sustenance you need.
Describing where you see yourself headed in the future is sometimes challenging. Your future is a story not yet written. As you write your career story, we'd like you to shift perspective — instead of a series of nouns or titles, such as manager or sales associate, think about a collection of adjectives or descriptors, such as creative, detail-oriented, leader or innovator. Think of your career story as having your cake and eating it too. The story includes characters, locations, situations, struggles, successes and so much more.
Throughout You Can't Eat Your Degree, we'll challenge you to create a description of what is important to you in your work life, the strengths you want to use, the feelings you want to have, and the impact you need to make as you progress through your college career and along your career path. You'll explore external or outside information and observations from family, friends, acquaintances, coworkers and all others you may interact with. You'll explore the internal or inside, examining characteristics, interests and values that are part of your core and that can signify what is important to you. We'll show you how to start taking note of the career path clues that are outside and inside you.
It may seem like the answer to “What do you want to be when you grow up?” gets harder to answer as you age. Choosing a major in college can seem like a daunting task; and shortly after you pick your major, it's time to think about your career path. Along the way, many people question if they are on the path that best fits their skills and passions. It can feel like an endless cycle of questioning, testing and trying; but it doesn't have to be that way
This book provides alternatives to the traditional answers for questions like “What do you want to be when you grow up?”, “Tell me about yourself.” and “What are your five-year goals?” You'll learn how to use the experiences you collect throughout college and the information you already know about yourself to find your dream job and plan and communicate the career path that best fits the real you.
You already have valuable information about yourself, your interests, dislikes and desires. As your education progresses, you will continue to collect information, experiences and understanding. After identifying outside and inside career path clues, you will begin to spot and compile emerging trends among those clues. Once you recognize trends, you can better manage your highs and lows. You can direct yourself to careers and positions that best fit your wants, needs, skills and abilities. You'll discover that next step after graduation and beyond. The descriptions and dialogue you create to script your career story can be used to:
— Identify your dream job and tell a prospective employer exactly why YOU are the perfect candidate
— Demonstrate clear direction and confidence in job interviews and career activities
— Ask the right questions in informational interviews, at career fairs and during job interviews
— Create a compelling essay that tells your future graduate school who you really are.
— Tell your career story using social media where recruiters in your desired field look for candidates.
By the end of the book, perhaps you will be able to eat your degree, as you'll know how to use your degree and experiences to guide your career story to a fulfilling future designed by you especially for you. When you combine your passions and philosophies identified during your college experiences in a coordinated and strategic view, you begin to create the story of your future — one that gives you more than your degree; one that provides the resources to eat!
Before we get started, we'd like to introduce ourselves so you know what our stories are and why we wanted you to have the information covered in this book. It is the outside view, inside perspective and career trend information we wish we'd had as we explored our career options in our late high school and college years. Throughout the book, we'll tell you more about our experiences and those of high school and college students we've counseled.
Danielle Forget Shield — Career and Life Lessons Learned
Danielle didn't know what she wanted to be when she grew up. In high school, she struggled with this quite a bit, but knew she enjoyed and excelled at math and science. One day, when someone asked what she was planning to study in college (for what seemed like the millionth time), she said engineering. Her father is an engineer and it just came out. The reaction was overwhelming — “wow, you must be smart.” That's all it took (outside). Danielle liked the response she got (inside) and just kept saying engineering (trend). Danielle was probably more surprised than anyone when she was accepted to some fairly prestigious engineering schools. It all felt like some crazy joke that just wouldn't end. But she didn't have any other direction in mind, so she kept moving forward.
After a couple of years of studying engineering and not doing very well (trend), Danielle decided she needed to transfer out of engineering and into something she might be better suited for. She wasn't sure what that would be, but it seemed like her GPA needed resuscitating. Instead, a work-study job manager (outside) encouraged her to get a co-op job to see if the practical part of engineering might motivate her to perform better in classes. The co-op job went well and the experience convinced Danielle that she should try a different kind of engineering instead of making a more drastic move (inside). That was the first step for Danielle on a long path of self-discovery. Making a slight shift made a tremendous difference — Dean's List different! Danielle was so intrigued by this discovery that she wondered what other small shifts could make big differences (trend). She set out on a quest to figure out who she was, what she wanted in a career and how to define it. She sought out and took any opportunity she could to explore her inner self and career story options while she was in college.
Times were tough when Danielle graduated from college. There was a weak economy and high unemployment. Engineering graduates were not getting job offers. In 1994, there weren't internet job postings and recruiting on campus was at a low point. Her career started with effort fueled by an informed career story — 362 mailed resumes that led to 12 interviews and one job offer. Sold! Danielle was excited to have a job, especially one in the specific area she studied, high speed rail. After moving from St. Louis to Houston with great anticipation, Danielle's position lasted about 2 weeks, until the project lost funding (outside). Danielle was then transferred to the solid-waste group. That's right, trash. It took about a month and a great manager (outside) to turn a really bad attitude into a great career future. Accepting that sometimes things just fall into place for a reason you might not understand was Danielle's next lesson. She realized that her career future was going to be her own responsibility and she dove head-first into learning as much as possible about finding a dream job that could also provide financial freedom. After all, she had about $60,000 in student loans to pay back.
Over the next 15 years, Danielle continued her pursuit of that perfect union between her dream job and financial success. Her path took her through some wonderful jobs and some not-so-great ones. Along the way, she repeated her mantra Know Yourself. She continued to read, learn, attend classes, watch others and pay close attention to what motivated her. And the further along her career path that she got, the more she realized that a dream job is a description and not a title. Things will continually change and most of the time you can't control your employer's financial security. You can, however, control your career direction by knowing where you want to go and by communicating your story effectively.
The culmination of this led to Danielle's annual personal trend analysis. She applied engineering principles to career planning: collect your data, analyze your data and use it to choose the next step. That process led her to realize that jumping from a corporate Vice President position into an entrepreneurial role is not that much of a stretch. It's just the next step toward her dream job description; the next chapter in her career story. Danielle gets excited to share the trend analysis process with students because, while you have a world of opportunities ahead of you, that potential can oftentimes seem like a huge weight on your shoulders. Danielle wants to lift that weight using a shortcut she wishes she'd had many years ago — the culmination of 20 years of workshops, books and conferences in one, simple process that will give you the knowledge and confidence to dictate your career story.
Tricia Berry — What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?
Early in her engineering career, Tricia took a course called “Managing Your Career with Power.” It was an eye-opening experience that encouraged her to explore her passions, take a look outside and inside herself, examine her trends and define her dream job (inside). It was the first time Tricia had taken this overall look at herself and her career trends and really thought about the career story she was crafting. The process in this book has much of its roots in Tricia's resulting journey toward her dream job. It is a process she knows would have been valuable while in college where there are so many more opportunities to explore career options and examine your trends. Had she understood this process or had this book in college, she could have crafted her career story differently in those early years, more closely aligning her passions, interests and strengths with her vision of a dream job.
Looking back now, it's easy to see the trends across Tricia's experiences and to connect them to her passions and dream job. But in college, she was working through her chemical engineering degree, exploring various types of jobs and wondering if she was really in the right major (inside). Tricia had chosen engineering because she was good in math and science and her mother had suggested engineering as an option. She'd picked chemical engineering because an advisor at The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) had said it was the easiest major to get into as an out-of-state student (outside). It wasn't a planned decision and wasn't derived from some deep inner passion for organic chemistry and differential equations.
Tricia ended up liking many of her engineering classes at UT Austin and learned what types of chemical engineering jobs she enjoyed through various co-op positions at The Dow Chemical Company. Of course, she also learned the classes and types of jobs she really hated and would never want to do for a career. She enjoyed all her extracurricular activities in college, including being a leader in various student organizations for which she organized events and led student teams (trend).
Upon graduation, Tricia took a cool job with Dow and immediately got involved in local organizations, community service efforts, school tutoring and more (trend). She progressed in her engineering career and took on more and more responsibilities, both at work and in her community engagements. She was recognized for her extracurricular efforts with a number of awards and additional leadership responsibilities. She also heard associates and family comment about the amount of time she invested in extra stuff outside her real engineering job responsibilities, and had one person say she needed to work on her priorities as it seemed like she always wanted to do the fun stuff first (outside).
Today, Tricia has a career that puts all that fun stuff first. After getting an MBA and while working full-time at Dow designing chemical equipment, she began to explore other career options that incorporated more of the fun stuff, such as volunteer interactions, event planning, fundraising, leading teams and educating others (trend). With our business, 825 Basics™, she gets to be entrepreneurial, creative and impactful to students and professionals. She gets to apply her engineering problem-solving to career processes and educating others. Concurrently, at UT Austin as the Director of the Women in Engineering Program she gets to be entrepreneurial and creative, and combine that with event planning, fundraising and educating students. She also gets to share her passion for math and science and her love for engineering with others, even though she doesn't actually design chemical equipment anymore.
The trends were there early on. Even in high school Tricia led teams, organized events and loved educating others. She has always enjoyed being creative and her entrepreneurial spirit came through in innovations in her organizations and various jobs. But it wasn't until the “Managing Your Career With Power” class that Tricia put it all together (inside). She started crafting her own career story and defining her own career path based on what she knew she enjoyed.
You have the chance to apply this process to your own career path and craft your own career story now. As you read through this book, you'll be able to answer the “Tell me about yourself question in a way that took Tricia many years to answer. She can now say, “I'm an engineer and educator. I love math and science and I love getting others excited about them too. I am also an entrepreneur and I get to use my creativity and communication skills to help others craft their own career story.” By the end of the book, you too will have a better understanding of yourself, a glimpse of your career trends and the beginnings of a script you can use to tell others who you are and where you want to go in your career.
Get Started
You'll probably find that while you are walking across campus, showering after a workout or doodling in class, thoughts and ideas will surface that need to be captured. Make sure you're ready to grab these thoughts. It's these thoughts, experiences and observations that will help you tell your story and design your own career path. In a world of endless options for capturing data, we'll let you determine what works best for you to collect your experiences, understandings and observations. We offer an electronic workbook that can be used with You Can't Eat Your Degree and is downloadable at 825basics.com. Let's get started! (Download the You Can't Eat Your Degree workbook at 825basics.com to begin collecting your information and creating your career story.)
Download
theYou Can’t Eat Your Degree
workbook at
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begin collecting your information and creating your career story.
The Authentic, Genuine, Real You
Who are you? You may know who you are, but how do you put it into words? How do you communicate it simply and easily to the thousands of people who will ask “Who are you?” or “What do you do?” When an interviewer says, “Tell me about yourself,” can you clearly answer? When you are asked on an application, “What are your strengths?” do you already know what you would want to say? You have to start with the authentic, genuine, real you to answer these questions.
Genuinely understand who you are, what you believe, what you want and know how to communicate it consistently to define you. Do so from an outside and an inside perspective — consider how others perceive you and what you know about yourself. People will see through a facade and it is easier to be true to yourself, genuine, who you truly are, than someone you are not. Combining outside and inside views helps define the real you, crafts your career story and guides your career path.
Look Outside
What do others tell you about yourself? What do you admire in other people? Who challenges you, pushes you to your limits and helps you define what you want to be? This outside image or external view of who you are can provide a new perspective on how to respond to “Tell me about yourself.”
This outside perspective includes how others view you and how you view other people. What others have to say about you, your work, or your strengths and weaknesses provides a glimpse of how the real you is perceived. But how you view others — what you respect in them, the characteristics you desire to emulate — partly defines what you value. Feedback people give you, perspectives shared by your mentors and supporters, and what you admire in your role models are outside help in completing the picture of your future, in creating each fulfilling step along your career path.
Pay Attention to Compliments
Consider what others observe about your strengths and skills. What kind of compliments do you consistently receive? Compliments give you a window into other people's positive views of your image or personal brand, the public perception of who you are and what about you is valued.
Pay attention to what people say to you. When someone gives you a compliment, they are affirming a strength they see in you. Compliments come in a variety of forms. You may not recognize compliments until you listen for them. Compliments can be understated and small, such as, “I enjoyed your presentation this morning.” And they can be suggestive and large, such as, “You really should run for student body President.”
Start noticing when, why and for what others recognize you. Compliments occur frequently, but most of us are too busy to notice. Some people need a reminder to stop and pay attention to the compliments they hear. If this is you, begin to really listen to what others say to you. You will often be surprised at what other people value about you.
Use your workbook to make a list of compliments you have received. Remember to include the small and large ones. What are the compliments that really hit home for you? What compliments make you light up and smile? You'll often seek compliments that are connected to your values or what you view as important in the workplace or in your life. What do your compliments say about your interests or your values?
Examples of Compliments and What They Might Say about You
That was very generous of you.
You are empathetic, think of others, are caring, enjoy giving, feel rewarded best with good feelings or give your time to help
She is the expert in our group.
You work hard, are smart, have a specific skill or understanding of an issue that makes you more valuable than your peers
If anyone ever needs help with that, you are the person to call.
You are open to questions, enjoy sharing your knowledge, value gaining expertise, work hard and well with others, like teaching or are detail-oriented with a flair for explaining things so that anyone can understand
You are a great networker.
You are friendly, outgoing, confident, recognize the need for relationships and recall details about people, are truly interested in hearing their stories or may be genuinely interested in helping others succeed
You are really good at getting things moving in our student organization.
You know where you are headed, have goals, understand how to get started or the details involved, are effective at leading, or enjoy planning, executing or seeing action happen
The You Can’t Eat Your Degree Workbook offers more examples.
The best compliment Danielle gets is when someone says she has done something clever. Clever, to her, is the intersection between creative and intelligent. She goes out of her way to make sure that she does clever things. The flip cartoon motif in this book is used in all of our books and is a result of this. If an accomplishment can be connected to cleverness, Danielle feels really good about it. This was true when she chose engineering as a reaction to someone saying she was smart in high school and carries through in her career story today. She has realized the importance of ensuring that her strengths of cleverness, creativity and intelligence are central to any steps along her career path.
When your compliments and strengths align, you know that you are effectively living your career story and being the best you in the classroom, workplace or other activities. If they do not align, explore ways you can showcase or communicate your strengths and successes to generate compliments, or examine the compliments you receive for strengths you may not have been aware of and strive to demonstrate those more often. We'll discuss exploring your strengths in the section Looking Inside.
Listen and pay attention to the compliments you receive and you'll have a very good picture of what strengths those around you see in you and value in you. They will help craft your script for your career path by highlighting those areas you want to note in conversations connected to your career future.
Crafting Gonzalo's Career Story:
What could compliments tell Gonzalo about himself — or at least tell him about the image others have of him?
Compliments Gonzalo has received:
— It’s great how you can talk to and connect with anyone at any level.
— I love your creative and unique solutions.
— You are good at generating new ideas and solutions that others don’t see.
— You have lots of projects going on. It always seems like you are starting something new and innovative.
Resulting Insight for His Career Story:
I value relationships and enjoy exploring new ideas. I’d embrace change and like a dynamic work environment and an organizational culture that appreciates innovation. I am a big-picture person because it’s hard to dig into details when you’re always thinking about new ideas or starting new projects.
Notate your compliments to unveil insight into your career story using the downloadable workbook. Regularly explore how your compliments can be incorporated in your story.
Consider Comments
Comments are those words that perhaps sting a bit or make you pause to consider how you could have done something differently What do you hear from those around you? In your past experiences, what areas of improvement have been noted? These types of comments are often made in a light-hearted joking manner, but there is generally some truth in teasing.
There are two sides of comments. While they highlight inherent weaknesses, they also call attention to the things you want to and can improve. Sometimes the comments you hear reflect upon weaknesses in your personality or abilities. No one is perfect. Everyone has areas where they don't excel and will likely never excel. You may also have things you just don't like to do, and so you may have no interest in improving in those areas. If we could all be great at sports, being an Olympian or a super-star athlete wouldn't be that big of a deal. Being aware of your inherent weaker traits and hearing that others agree with your personal perception allows you to identify areas that are not good career paths for you. Danielle is terrible at cooking. She's sure she could work to get better at it, but she doesn't enjoy it. If someone made a comment about her cooking, she'd likely turn it into a joke and let them know how much she dislikes cooking. And she'd remind herself that being a chef is not a career path she should ever consider.
Examples of Comments and What They Might Say About You
With friends like you, who needs enemies?