Once you recover from the busyness of fall semester, get the chance to reconnect with family and friends, and do your fair share of relaxing and Netflix-bingeing, consider taking some time to explore your career interests in a low-stress environment. Below are three ways you can explore over winter break. Don’t worry, most of these steps can be completed from the comfort of your couch. If you find yourself wanting more steps, please check out our Winter Break Checklist.
- Identify your skills and interests
Before you make career decisions, we encourage you to invest time in learning more about yourself. Identifying your skills, interests, and values will equip you with the critical self-knowledge needed when exploring career fields and different pathways. We recommend that you utilize self-assessment tools and complete reflective exercises to get started learning about yourself:
Activate your Focus 2 account. Focus 2 Career is a major and career exploration platform that will guide you through a series of self-assessments on career planning, academic strengths, and career readiness. Your assessment results are then matched to career and BC-specific major options. To Access: Complete the registration form; new users will be required to enter the access code: Eagles.
Complete the Workview/Lifeview Exercise: Consider your views on work and life and their integration.
Complete the Odyssey Planning Exercise: Brainstorm possible futures for yourself by creating three different potential versions of your life.
- Research potential careers
It can be difficult to know where to begin when exploring potential career paths. However, the more you expose yourself to, and the more information you gather, the better prepared you will be to make a decision about your next steps. As a BC student, you have access to multiple resources that allow you to learn broadly about different industries and deeply about specific professions. Some ways to begin your career research include:
Explore the six career cluster pages. As you scroll through each career cluster page, there are many resources to help inform your search. Access curated industry guides within each career cluster to help you better understand the diversity of careers within any given industry.
Peruse the First Destination Dashboard, where you can access information about where recent alumni have landed after graduation.
As you find career paths of interest, you can search within the Firsthand Guides or the Occupational Outlook Handbook to learn details about those paths, including skills used, education requirements, average salary, and more.
- Conduct exploratory career conversations
As you begin to identify possible career matches and industries of interest, setting up exploratory career conversations with professionals working within careers of interest can be a great way to learn more about the career. Exploratory career conversations are informal interviews with professionals. There are several resources to help you identify your network and connect with professionals. Here are some ways to connect:
Identify who is already in your network. Brainstorm any connections you may have within your family, community, and past professional spheres that may be working in careers that interest you.
Build and expand your network by connecting with professionals within the Boston College alumni community. Two main ways to connect you to the alumni network are EagleExchange and LinkedIn.
The EagleExchange platform gives you open access to over 12,000 alumni who have volunteered to be available for career-related conversations. The platform allows you to search and filter within the alumni community to find professionals who have shared interests, identities, and areas of study. It’s easy to send messages to alumni and request meetings for either a phone or video call within this platform.
LinkedIn: When you create a LinkedIn profile, you can then follow the Boston College page and search for alumni via the alumni tab. As you identify alumni that you would like to connect with you can send an introductory message.
What steps will you take to move forward?
Boston College Career Center Blog 
0 comments on “3 Ways to Use Winter Break to Explore”