Lessons

PLAYBOOK

Playbook Lessons

Lesson 1: Define Your Career Direction

The first component of the Career Playbook program is broken down into three exercises to help you define your values, your passions, and your work preferences. We recommend first wathcing the Land Your Dream Job videos and then printing this packet so that you can write down your responses by hand. Writing gives us more freedom to reflect and dream, which is exactly what you want to do in this assignment.

Values
Values are defined as what’s most important to you in life. Defining your values is an important step in understanding what you want to achieve, how work fits into that picture, and what you should prioritize when seeking a job you love.
Passions
Discerning your passions can shed light on the types of work that will be most fulfilling to you. This exercise will help you understand the skills you have, how they align with what you love doing, and what areas you would like to learn more about.
Job Search Parameters
A set of exercises to help you establish parameters for your search based upon the skills and issues you are passionate about, along with preferences you have regarding your workplace environment.

Lesson 2: Build a Resume

We have compiled all the available research, recruiter advice, and our 10 years of experience helping job seekers into the highest value, safest-bet resume creation template. The goal of this exercise is to create a strong resume quickly – a resume that effectively communicates your professional brand and still increases your odds of getting noticed by a recruiter or resume review software.

Lesson 3: Create a LinkedIn Profile

LinkedIn is important because it’s where people turn to find your professional brand before they speak with you or interview you. 57% of employers flat out won’t interview a candidate they can’t find online. Countless others will reject candidates whose online presence does not effectively communicate their professional brand. This worksheet will walk you through editing the 5 most critical pieces of your LinkedIn profile.

For extra guidance on using LinkedIn, this course titled Learning LinkedIn for Students is a great resource!

Lesson 4: Write a Cover Letter

Whether you’ve networked your way in or you’re submitting your application materials without that advocate, this guide walks you through creating stellar cover letters in 30 minutes.

Lesson 5: Research and Find Opportunities

In this exercise, you’ll be researching and building a full list of organizations where you may want to work, based on your values, passions, and preferences. You’ll focus on organizations, not job postings, because: 1) only 50% of job openings are ever advertised online and 2) before you start networking, you want to know the landscape of organizations you could consider and prioritize which you want to go after first. Companion Playsheet

Lesson 6: Maximizing CareerShift

CareerShift enables you to search thousands of open opportunities, find helpful contacts, and convert your organized research into strategic outreach. CareerShift can make you more efficient, better targeted, and more prepared in your search for a great job.

Lesson 7: Informational and Formal Interview Prep

The two main goals of informational interviews are to learn and gain an advocate. This exercise helps you achieve these goals via research, practice, and preparation.

Lesson 8: Interview Practice Questions

This cheat sheet shares LinkedIn’s top 30 behavioral interview questions used to screen for each of these traits. You can use them to prepare more extensively for your interviews.

Lesson 9: My First 30 Days

Starting a new job is an adventure. It’s easy to be overwhelmed by the excitement, the new people and processes, and the anxiety of figuring out what is expected of you and how you’ll perform at a high level while still finding your footing. This guide helps you to get your heart and mind in the right place, get educated and organized, and get ready to hit the ground running in a new role.