A Parent's Role
A message from the Director of the CDC:
Your student will be like no other student in his or her search for career direction. Whether your son or daughter is undecided in his or her major or is a graduating senior without a clear idea about what comes next, you play an important role.
Your student may look to you for guidance when it comes to choosing a major or career path. Don’t pretend to have all of the answers; encourage your student to use the resources available, like those in the career center. Be patient with your student, but also encourage him or her to work in steps to reach a decision he or she can feel confident about. It isn’t likely that a “magic answer” will appear out of a hat; remind your student that there is research to be done, informational interviews to conduct and introductory classes to take.
According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, nearly 50 percent of all students coming to college with a major in mind will change their major over the course of four years.
It makes sense. As your student learns more about his or her interests, skills and passions and as he or she develops throughout the college experience, your student’s career ideas and goals may change. As a parent, work to support your child’s exploration in this area.
Be a different voice than what your child may hear from our culture; help your child to know that his or her identity is much more than a job title. From our end and yours, perhaps we can help your student recognize his or her strengths, gifts, talents and interests to find a career path that is the right fit, in his or her own time.
And, the liberal arts education your child will receive at Bluffton will prepare him or her for more than just a job, but for vocation throughout his or her lifetime.
Contact Kathy Dickson, Director, with any questions you may have.
The Career Development Center’s Role
As you help your student discern his or her career goals, it is helpful for you to understand our role in this process. As part of the student life office on campus, we:
- challenge students while also providing support.
- encourage them to work to explore their identity and pursue their purpose.
- remain available for them during “office hours” and beyond.
- build and maintain relationships with area employers and alumni.
- serve Bluffton alumni for a lifetime.
- provide workshops and training in group and individual settings on topics, such as:
- resume and cover letter development and critique.
- application do’s and don’ts (job, internship, graduate school).
- deciding a major.
- conducting self-assessments, computer and paper-based.
- preparing a job search plan and timeline.
- networking.
- professional etiquette (from dining to dress).
- interview preparation and mock interviews.
- researching graduate programs, assistantships, fellowships and service opportunities.
- and more!
The National Association of Colleges and Employers encourages students to: “Develop a habit of stopping by the career services office on a regular basis. You need to check in a few times your freshman year, more often during your sophomore year, frequently during your junior year, and weekly during your senior year!”
The following is a list we give students working to decide on a major or career goal. You may walk through this list with your child, or check in from time-to-time on their progress.
How do I decide on a major and a career goal?
Things to Do to Help Me Make a Decision
The “Graduating Student & Alumni Survey” conducted by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) surveyed on how students choose their majors. In 2006, 66.8 percent of students reported choosing their major because they liked the kind of work it will allow them to do; 16.1 percent of students “said that they ‘sort of drifted’ into their majors”; 6.1 percent based the decision on the "earning potential of their majors”; 5.4 percent of respondents reported that they "followed a family member or a friend’s idea to help them choose their majors” and the remaining 5.6 percent of respondents listed "other reasons as to how they chose their majors.” (From: What Students Think: A Report on NACE's 2006 Graduating Student & Alumni Survey)
Additional Reading You may look to the book Career Coaching Your Kids by David H.Montross, Theresa E. Kane and Robert J. Ginn, Jr. to learn more. The authors suggest four important roles:
Parent as Clarifier: KEY ACTIONS (page 70)
- Watch for natural interests and support their development.
- Provide an environment rich in opportunities to express interests and preferences.
- Have your child complete an interest inventory.
- Legitimize the development of natural skills that may or may not have commercial potential.
- Give legitimacy to the existence and importance of values, skills, and interests as aspects of your child’s emerging self-concept.
- Help your child learn how to handle distress and impulse, to develop emotional intelligence.
- Review with your child the data from his or her self-assessment (skills, interests, values, personality), and keep the focus on the child as the key player in the process.
Parent as Connector: KEY ACTIONS (page 83)
- Help your child gather data about the real world at work.
- Honor your child’s analytical process—it is vastly more productive for your child to invest time learning that a particular career is not for her than for you to tell her you think that career is a bad choice.
- You do not need to act like an expert who knows all about careers.
- Help your child connect the data gathered during self-assessment with various options, by asking, “If you could wave a magic wand and do whatever you liked, what would you do?”
- Connect your child to appropriate resources (reading, people, experiences) to assist with career exploration.
- Discuss the data your child finds and what he has learned from it.
- Connect your child to your network of friends and acquaintances for career exploration purposes.
- Help your child to see that pain and confusion are positive aspects of growth.
- Help your child to stay with her perceived hopes and trust in her vision of herself.
Parent as Challenger: KEY ACTIONS (page 98)
- Talk with your children about career aspirations. Express interest in their plans, communicate the importance of setting goals.
- Provide resources such as ideas on how to get more information and contacts for informational interviews.
- Don’t let them get discouraged if they are not excited about a field that they explore. Explain that clarifying what one does not want to do is an important step toward focusing on a direction they might want to take.
- Build self-confidence: Brainstorm informational interview questions, let them practice asking them, give them feedback and suggestions.
- Discuss informational interview results with them. Decipher jargon that they hear from others; motivate them to move on if they’ve had a bad experience. Help them interpret what they are hearing and determine next steps.
- Help them monitor progress toward goals, process what they are learning, provide feedback and suggestions about how to keep or get back on track.
- Together create and review action plans, checklists, and milestones.
Parent as Motivator: KEY ACTIONS (page 122)
- Help your child to overcome nonchalance that may be simply disguising a fear of failure.
- Help your child understand the combination of liberty and necessity that governs most of our lives.
- Provide support in a family setting.
- Remember that one of the core motivations for participation in career decision making is that making decisions is what life is about.
- Help to increase the number of variables being considered.
- Keep the decision making process going even when your child says, “You decide for me!”
- Help your child understand that endurance is the critical element of success in job hunting.
- In times of unemployment, help your child focus on the growth potential in that situation.
