For the first half of PGP 10 (Careers), we’ve focused on climbing the steps to our future careers. I was especially excited about this class because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to focus my university learning on or what I was going to pursue in my adult life. Although many of my friends weren’t enjoying this class, I thought it was super beneficial for me. I found out a lot about what I can work towards, what I need to achieve, and how I’m going to achieve certain future goals.
Since this class was recently adopted by PLP, we had a driving question as per usual:
“How can I effectively market myself to employers?”
The beginning of this project was probably my favourite. As I said before, I didn’t know what I wanted to pursue post-secondary. I knew I wanted something along the lines of business and engineering but I had no clue what so I was expecting and somewhat relying on this class to solve my issues.
Our teacher, Mr. Harris, gave us a few job exploration surveys to fill out and record our answers. I found that these surveys were super helpful because I don’t want to say that a survey decided my future, but it did put me in the right direction and gave me a series of options that I liked very much. Although I’d still love to run some sort of business, I am leaning towards perusing an automotive engineering career. I’ve always been fond of engineering and have gotten really into the car culture in the past couple of years so the thought of designing my own car motivated me to follow this path.
As we began to move on from our career exploration stage, we needed a way to start budgeting and saving up for education to reach these goals. Harris told us about his series of budget-wise mistakes during his preparation for University which might have been to inspire us or warn us, I don’t know. We began working towards this by learning all about the types of payments that affect our budget and savings in different ways, especially Fixed and Variable payments.
From there we began learning about different styles of income, specifically the Gig-Economy. We learned about the benefits and struggles of life as a Uber driver through an online simulation of what an average driver has to do weekly to make enough money to pay off dues, put food on the table, and spend time with family and friends. What I learned was that in my opinion, this job sucks as a full-time job. At times you could work harsh and lengthy hours just to end up making minimum wage or less. Apart from the variable payments, maintaining a healthy and trustworthy reputation is hard when you have to deal with un-cooperative customers. I do believe that this would be a strong side hustle if you’re only working part-time but I don’t plan on pursuing this path.
From that point, we realized that to start budgeting money, we need money to begin with. Although a quarter of the class already had resumes and jobs, we began learning how to make a resume that would grab the attention of an employer within seconds. I thought that my resume was fine because it had given me 2 jobs already but apparently, it could do better. We learned about all the important and necessary information that must be added and what should be avoided as well to market a sophisticated and strong worker with enough experience for the position. In the end, I did agree that my “updated” resume looks better than my original. It’s more visually appealing and displays the same information as my current one.
To follow up on the resumes, we now needed to market ourselves even further with business cards. I’ve never planned on using business cards at all but I’ve always liked them. Frankly, I don’t know how beneficial business cards are to us at the moment but I guess it doesn’t hurt to learn about them. I had no trouble at all with getting started. Like before, we learned about what should and shouldn’t be on our business cards and how they too should be visually and potentially physically appealing. The more texture to a card, the higher quality worker you are I guess 🤷‍♂️. I quickly managed to whip up 2 double-sided cards with their own appealing design. It took some rounds of critique but I think I created some solid cards.
Finally, before we finished up this bit of the project we each paired up and scripted and filmed a mock interview with valid and thorough questions that would be used in a real interview. We were also dressed nicely as if it was real and acted accordingly. I worked with my good friend Ben Tuck to act out an interview for a job at Deep Cove Gelato. I thought we did a great job conveying what we had learned in our video because I had previous experience which I used to replicate questions and answers. Do watch our video below!👇
Thanks for taking the time to read again,
see you next time đź‘‹