Career Planning with the Career and Co-op Centre

Hello readers!

Today I’m going to be sharing my career planning experience with the Career and Co-op Centre. I worked with The Creative School's Career Education Specialist, who guided me through workbooks designed to help students better understand their strengths, interests and values. They also help you with career research, creating an action plan, resumés and interview skills.

I’m on track to graduate from Ryerson’s Media Production program in 2021, but I’m still unsure about which career path to pursue, so I asked my supervisors for any resources that might help me figure that out and they directed me to the Career and Co-op Centre for career advising. You simply have to set up an appointment with a Career Education Team Member. I took a few strengths finder tests before my appointment, such as Gallup Strengthsfinder (external link) , Truity (external link)  and VIA (external link) . Remember to read the results with a grain of salt, and evaluate which ones may be more accurate and which may be inaccurate. 

During the first meeting, we mostly discussed my strengths results, and what I thought about them – if they were accurate and how I thought I applied them in my work. It was helpful to talk through my strengths with someone else to get another perspective, but also to receive insight on how I may apply them and to really understand what the strengths mean in my case. We then discussed what I was looking for with career advising and decided to start from the beginning of the Career Workbook. If you’re more confident about your goals you can also just start from the research phase. 

The workbook asked me various questions about my interests, strengths and values. It was actually pretty challenging to answer the questions that would help me determine what kind of work I felt fulfilled doing. I reflected on them for a while, and it truly did help me realize what kind of stuff drained me and what kind of work I wanted to do again. 

I also found what kind of values and needs I would want in a job, an example being work/life balance. 

Then I talked to the specialist again to discuss what I wrote in the reflection and she helped me process the information in a realistic way. We also discussed what kind of steps I might take to find and get to my ideal career. 

I’ve now received another workbook dedicated to researching potential jobs. It provides links to various job websites for us to explore and choose jobs to research and to see what’s actually out there right now. I’m still working on this, but your Career Advisor can help you through the process of deciding which jobs might suit you and find jobs to do more in-depth research on. 

I think that a lot of the career concerns you may have, whether you don’t know what you want to pursue or you don’t know what steps you need to take to get to your goals can be addressed with career advising. Your advisor will guide you through the steps of understanding your strengths and interests, but it’s a lot of reflecting by yourself and researching as well. I would recommend this to anyone, whether you know what you want to do or not. 

To find out more about Career and Co-op support, check out their website! They also provide other advising services for graduate studies, employment, interview tips and more. Head to their appointments page to book a time with a Career Education specialist!

You can also check out the Career and Co-op Centre on their Instagram page (external link)  for career tips and to stay updated on opportunities and events!