What is a Career Experience?
Career Experiences are opportunities that give you hands-on experience in an industry or role related to your career goals. They also support your career readiness and help you connect your academics to your career. At the center of a career experience is learning: applying what you are learning in the classroom to a professional setting, honing and building skills, gaining valuable experience and knowledge, exploring career options, and growing your social cultural capital.
Typically, these experiences take place in a workplace setting, with a structured position: internships, campus employment, part-time and full-time jobs related to your career interests and/or major, student teaching, apprenticeships, externships, research, and practicum. There are also opportunities that may help you ease into these more formal career experiences such as volunteering, informational interviewing, student organizations.
Internships are a defined-term position, usually in an academic quarter or summer, that provides professional experience for a student or trainee. You may be assigned to a specific project, work in a specific job role, or complete tasks as assigned day to day. Internships can be paid or unpaid, full- or part-time. Students can sometimes earn academic credit for the experience (for more information, check out CLD 250).
A part-time or full-time job is a great way to build your skillset and gain resume-worthy experience. When looking to build relevant experience in your job, start by identifying the skills you would like to acquire and then seek opportunities that will allow you to gain and practice those skills on the job.
An on-campus job allows you to gain careerrelevant skills in a flexible environment. DePaul offers a wide variety of on-campus jobs, from help desk positions to office assistants and many more. You can enhance the career benefit of your on-campus job by taking the initiative to ask for specific projects, help solve problems, network with faculty and staff—all while building your personal brand. Find open positions at studentemployment.depaul.edu.
Student teaching is a full-time, immersive experience in which students are placed in a real classroom setting to learn and observe from experienced teachers, as well as apply their own knowledge and skills from their studies. This hands on experience usually entails a structured assuming of most teaching responsibilities, and is a requirement of most education programs and teaching certificates. Visit the College of Education for more information on student teaching.
A micro-experience is a short-term, often project-based, experience that allows you to get some hands-on work and exposure to a role/industry of interest. These are often arranged directly with an employer via networking. You can also find paid micro-internships through our Parker Dewey page.
This is a great way to gain both practical experience and personal fulfillment—you can volunteer as an individual or as part of a group or organization. Whether directly related to your major or not, volunteer experience impresses employers. Volunteer Match is a great platform to find volunteering opportuntiies.
Shadowing a professional is a great way to learn more about the average workday, expectations, skills needed for a given role. The goals is to observe and learn as you follow a professional through their workday. This can be a one-time/ one-day experience or multiple days over a period of time. Check out our resources on Job Shadowing.
There are other ways that you can get started with career experiences, especially if you are still in an exploration / learning stage. Activities like informational interviews, involvement with student organizations, case competitions, webinars, panels, etc. are a great way for you to engage with professionals in your industries of interest, learn more about the roles, identify skills to hone, and build your network. For a variety of free job simulations from a variety of industry-leading companies, check out The Forage.
Preparing for Your Experience
Before you get started with your experience, there’s a lot you can do to set yourself up for success. Taking the time to set goals, review expectations and skills, as well as planning ahead can make the career experience start on a much better note.
As you get ready to start an experience, this is a good time to start thinking about what you can do to prepare yourself. Part of that is thinking about expectations. Having these expectations established or at least having thought through them can help you start your experience off on the right foot and make the onboarding process go smoothly.
What’s expected of you? Review the offer letter and job description to get an idea what is expected of you in this role: specific shifts or schedule, projects you’ll be working on, skills or resources that you’ll be expected to have. You can also reach out to your supervisor to discuss their expectations for you--this can be a good time to ask them what you can expect from them as a supervisor too.
What are your expectations? Identifying your goals and learning outcomes can be a great way to maximize the experience. An easy way to get started with this is making a list of things you want to learn more about: specific skills, industry knowledge, other roles or paths within the industry, the organization and workplace culture, etc. Going in with clear learning expectations for yourself will set you up to better engage in and find opportunities for professional development.
Goal setting is an important part of your career readiness journey, and it’s something you’ll do throughout your career. When you take time to set goals, you give yourself the space to think through what’s important for you and your career development. Through goal setting, you can identify your long term vision, identify your short term motivation, and organize your time and resources. Most importantly, having clearly defined goals will help you measure your progress and, when necessary, reevaluate.
Here are some questions to get started:
-
What do I want to accomplish?
-
How am I going to accomplish it?
-
How will I measure my objective?
-
What evidence will I need / have to prove that I have acquired the knowledge/skills?
-
What do I currently lack that I need to gain, and how will I gain it?
-
What is lacking in terms of: skill, knowledge, experience
-
Work backwards from the outcome
Learning in Your Experience
Engaging in a career experience is a great way for you to gain hands-on work experience that will prepare you for your career. However, it’s not just about doing the work. How you choose to engage with that experience will shape what you get out of it. Taking time to set clear goals and expectations going into the experience will help you identify opportunities to hone and develop skills, explore the industry and job function, grow your network, and identify potential next steps.
Career experiences are a great way for you to make sense of and apply what you’re learning in classes in a workplace setting. It’s also a great opportunity for you to learn new skills, learn about the industry and job function, and learn more about yourself and your goals. In short: it’s a learning experience. Approaching the work with this learning mindset is important because it will help you identify what you’re learning and how you can apply that to what’s next.
Here are some questions to help you get into the right mindset:
Where does this experience fit in my career readiness journey?
What skills will I gain from this experience?
Who can I connect with and add to my network?
Reflection can be a challenging activity, but it’s an incredibly valuable one. Through reflection, you look back at an activity, decision, or experience to make sense of what you’ve learned from it, why that matters for you, and how you might be able to use that learning/awareness in the future. By reflecting, you can make connections, making sense of your learning so that you can apply it.
Throughout your career, you’ll be asked to reflect: in performance appraisals, mission and vision setting, or assessing a project. Here are some questions that can get you started with reflection (From "A Taxonomy of Reflection" by Peter Pappas):
• What did I do? What is significant about it?
• What was important about what I did? Did I meet my goals?
• When have I done this kind of work before? Where could I use this again?
• Do I see any patterns or relationships in what I did?
• How well did I do? What worked? What do I need to improve?
• What should I do next? What's my plan?
Career experiences are a great way for you to explore options and potential paths. They can also help you to test out specific industries amd job functions to determine if it's a good fit for you. Whether you're doing a job simulation or participating in an internship, a career experience is a hands-on opportunity that allows you to learn more about specific roles and job functions, as well as the industry. It can also help you to see how your academics connect to your future career and goals, idenitfying opportunities for further learning and development. Taking time to do some self-assessment and exploration work before hand can give you the language and tools to reflect on the experience and analyze how it aligns with your career goals and workplace values.