Make Your Career Soar With KITES
Anyone who’s been around me much knows that I have a thing for clever acronyms. They’re good mnemonic devices; they help us remember important concepts. HOMES is a common example; it helps us remember the names of the Great Lakes: Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior. In this article, I’ll introduce an acronym to help you remember those traits about yourself that employers will be most concerned with: KITES.
Knowledge. You may have heard that it’s not what you know, but who you know. While that’s true to some extent, you have to know something about the field you want to go into in order to land an interview. College students accomplish this by choosing courses that pertain to their career goals. Anybody can skill up by taking free or low-cost online courses, such as those offered through sites such as Coursera, Udemy, or your local community college. Selectively browsing websites, or choosing sources of information that are credible and reliable, is another way. And then there’s the good old-fashioned approach of picking up a book and reading it. With so many sources of information readily available, you have no one to blame but yourself if you don’t know at least a little bit of what you need to know for the career you want.
Interests. Our interests are what attract us to certain bodies of knowledge and activities. Some interests come and go, and some stay with us for a lifetime. Often your interests are rooted in your personality preferences. If you are a social person, you might be interested in fields such as psychology, sociology, communications, and management. If you like solving problems, then the STEM fields are probably interesting to you. Creative interests can involve making or appreciating art, or thinking up new ways of doing something. An interest can lead to a satisfying career, or it can be a great way to fill your spare time. In any case, learn to identify what your interests are and how those might connect to careers. The U.S. Department of Labor’s free online O*NET Interest Profiler can help you discover what your career-related interests are.
Talents. Here I’m using talents to describe those things that you are naturally good at doing. American psychologist Howard Gardner coined the term Multiple Intelligences to describe eight broad areas in which people possess some degree of natural ability: Visual-Spatial, Linguistic-Verbal, Interpersonal, Intrapersonal, Logical-Mathematical, Musical, Bodily-Kinesthetic, and Naturalistic. Understanding which intelligences come easily to you can help in choosing a major or career. And by the way, Gardner asserted that with knowledge and practice, people can develop their weaker intelligences, so no one is locked into a particular talent track. To learn more about Multiple Intelligences, read this article by Kendra Cherry at verywellmind.com.
Experience. The role of experience in seeking a job or internship cannot be overestimated. “But, how can I land a job if I don’t have experience?” you ask. There are lots of ways you can build experience while in college. Many part-time jobs require no experience at all, yet they will help you build transferable skills that employers seek, such as problem-solving, communication, a strong work ethic, collaboration, and basic quantitative reasoning (if you want to see the full list of top skills employers want, read the report from the National Association of Colleges and Employers). Volunteering and community service is another way to build experience. Do you like animals? Volunteer with an animal shelter or rescue organization. Are you passionate about the environment? Help clean up a creek or park. Love working with children? Volunteer with a local nonprofit that benefits children and at-risk youth. Participating in contests and competitions is another good way to gain valuable experience. Other ways include studying abroad, taking on leadership roles in student organizations, and job-shadowing someone who’s doing a job you might be interested in doing someday.
Skills. Skills can be divided into several types. Technical skills are those involving technological tools and programs, such as coding, Photoshop, PowerPoint, and so on. Demonstrable skills are ones you can show on the spot, like speaking Spanish, improvisational acting, keyboarding, public speaking, and the like. Soft skills-sometimes called transferable skills or essential skills-are those that are not as easy to demonstrate on the spot because they are context-specific, like critical thinking, creativity, and problem-solving. You can name your technical and demonstrable skills easily, but soft skills are better explained in the context of a specific situation. That means that storytelling might be a skill you’d want to develop for your job search and interviewing experiences. This short article from Glassdoor gives an example of how to use storytelling to answer one of the most common interview questions, “Tell me about yourself.”
And one final thought: Traditionally shaped kites look somewhat like the letter V, right? That V stands for values. You have to take into consideration what’s important to you when choosing a career path. We get values from our families, our religious traditions, our cultures, our peers, and from our own life experiences. The work we choose to do has to match with our values, otherwise, we find ourselves extremely dissatisfied with our work. Imagine if a person who strongly values family never has time for family because of her work. She’s going to be pretty miserable at her job, probably resenting it more and more each day, unless that work provides great pay and benefits for her family. In that case, the rewards outweigh the costs. You have to decide if your chosen career path matches up with the values that are most precious to you.
So now you have your KITES: Knowledge, Interests, Talents, Experience, and Skills. And those KITES are V-shaped for values! When you begin your career planning, which often starts with choosing a major in college, consider your KITES and your values and how those match up with the goal you’re considering. If there’s a good fit, then your KITES will help you soar in that career field. If there’s not a good match at first, ask yourself some deep questions: Am I willing to invest the time, effort, and money to acquire the knowledge, experience, and skills required for that career? Are my interests and talents in that career field strong enough to keep me aloft? Does that career match well with my personal values? If the answers lean toward the negative, then maybe reconsidering your career goal is the next step you should take. Reevaluate your KITES and your values, and do some more exploring. Your college or university’s career services team will be more than happy to help you build KITES that soar!
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Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.
