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Career Exploration Exercises
Wanderings Map
The Career Wanderings Map, adapted from You Majored in What? Mapping your Path from Chaos to Career by Dr. Katherine Brooks, is a guided, reflective exercise that takes you through a series of prompts to mine your past experiences for themes and patterns that may not yet be obvious to you. These themes can help you explore what kinds of positions, industries, and experiences might be a great next step.
So get a blank piece of paper, a couple of markers, and watch this on creating your own Wanderings Map. Once you’ve drawn your map, schedule an appointment with an advisor to review it and explore possible next steps for you.
Skills Inventory
The Skills Inventory (PDF) is a reflective exercise that helps you identify what skills you have used to achieve previous accomplishments or impact you had made throughout an experience. This worksheet helps you find active language to demonstrate your skills rather than just listing the tasks when talking about yourself. It also helps you see where you might have some skill gaps. These gaps, if relevant to future interests, can assist in narrowing down what type of role or position you could take on next to begin building those skills. Feel free to bring this with you to an appointment to discuss how to use this when developing your resume or preparing for an interview or networking conversation.
Download the Skills Inventory Handout
Perfect World Scenario
The Perfect World Scenario (PDF) is a guided activity to get you thinking about all aspects of work in your perfect world, from attire and commute time, to your supervisor and what success means to you. Grab a notepad and jot down your thoughts to the 12 questions listed on the worksheet. Keep in mind, they don’t all have to connect with each other because you won’t typically have all 12 perfect choices at one time. Instead, after answering all of the questions, pick a few to prioritize for your next step.
Download the Perfect World Scenario Prompts
Values Inventory
Values are an important part of the career decision-making process. The Work Values Inventory (PDF) exercise will help you identify and prioritize your core values as they relate to how you value your work environment, your work interactions, and your work activities.