Career Decision Making Workshop Outline

Jeff Brooks-Harris & Brad Adams
Counseling and Student Development Center
University of Hawai'i at Manoa

Reflecting on Experience

Childhood Career Fantasy

Ask participants to briefly write down answers to each of these questions:

• When you were a child, how did you answer the questions, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
• What about this job captured your attention?
• Of these characteristics, which are still important to you?
• Which of these characteristics are no longer important?
• What factors do you now see as necessary for you in choosing a good job?

Have each participant share their answers to the questions about their childhood career fantasy. This exercise can be used to introduce a discussion of the factors that go into career decision making.

Assimilating and Conceptualizing

Factors that affect career development

• Interests
• Values
• Skills
• Personality
• Past Experience
• Chance
• Effort
• Physical Characteristics

Holland's Theory -

• Six Occupational Themes - RIASEC
• Can be used to describe both work personality and work environment
• Advantages of match between work personality and environment: Job satisfaction, Productivity, Job tenure, Lower absenteeism

Experimenting and Practicing

• Holland Checklist
  [Note: We use a short checklist based on Holland's theory - different versions are available. If you don't want to use a checklist, you can read or handout descriptions of Holland's typology and ask participants to decide which types describe them best.]
• Sorting Exercise
  • Place six signs representing the six Holland themes around the room. Make sure they are in RIASEC order.
  • Have participants arrange themselves near the sign(s) that describe their predominant interest(s).
  • Have each participant share their predominant theme(s) and some of the strongest interests, values and skills that they identified on the checklist. Use the placement of people to highlight how some people's interests are highly differentiated (clear interest in one theme) whereas others are not (interested in several areas). Also talk about how themes next to one another on the RIASEC hexagon are more similar than those on opposite sides.

Planning for Application

What to do next? - Discuss options for next steps

• More specific career counseling or testing
• Gather more information - Where?
• Career library
• Computer-based exploration
• Talk to people in career areas of interest
• Talk to professors
• Take classes in areas of interest

Action Plan
Have each person write down their action plan, what they plan to do next to further their own process of career development. Have each participant share their action plan. It may be helpful to encourage specificity and ask participants when they plan to accomplish these goals or steps.

Questions and Answers

Hand out Evaluations