Empathize
Empathy allows you to map and understand your experiences and how they affect your views. As you gain experience and your life evolves, your values, interests, and skills will also evolve. These exercises will help you map those changes to continue to find the things in life that fulfill and energize you.
Reflection Exercises
Use these resources to evaluate the activities (career and non-career) to which you are drawn.
Energy Engagement Worksheet
To better understand the activities you enjoy, try the exercise below and create your own Energy Engagement Worksheet. Use the sample worksheet below as a guide.
Instructions:
- List your regular activities and note if they give you energy or drain your energy.
- Using the Worksheet Sample as a guide, plot those activities on a chart showing how much energy you gain or lose. Larger bars indicate more energy gained or lost.
- Reflect on your map and see what you notice about these patterns. Which activities are energy-giving or draining?
- Are there small changes could you make to your schedule to improve this energy flow?
Key Helpful Resources
The career decision-making process is ongoing throughout your professional life and as your career progresses, you will find yourself using the process again. There are times you may feel frustrated as if you are no closer to finding direction than when you started. If you’re going through the process, you are making progress. Each area you explore takes you closer to good fit options for you. Check out this brief video and step-by-step layout to help ease the career decision-making process.
The National Association of Colleges & Employers has established eight (8) Career Readiness Competencies most valued by Employers across industries.
Employers value soft skills—interpersonal and critical thinking skills needed to interact successfully and to perform efficiently and effectively in the workplace. Search these skills in the Occupational Network, an online database containing hundreds of job definitions to help job seekers understand the current U.S. job market.