New Year, New Job?

-
It's a new year, and that means it's time to set goals to become a better person. While many will give up or make excuses for not keeping up with their new found aspirations, no is NOT an option for me.

My personal goals range from traveling more, exploring new places, and increase my skills in the kitchen...but it's my professional goals that somewhat intimidate me. But if your goals don't intimidate you are they really worth achieving?


Here's my point: I'm coming to the end of my graduate studies, and that scares the heck out of me. My goal is to have a new job by the time I graduate in Summer. This means I need to get myself together in 5-6 short months if I hope to have something lined up come August.

Here are two major goals I am working towards to have any type of chance of landing a new job.

1. Add to my portfolio 


This is where coffee/espresso comes in! I have the website. I have the pages and navigation set up. I have sample work from my studies and performance support pieces. But the one thing that remains undone is adding more eLearning examples.

My ultimate career goal is to obtain a position creating eLearning experiences for companies or businesses that are innovative, fast pace, and allow me to experiment with new technology and design when appropriate. 

I would love to put samples from my current position out there on the interweb, but seeing as I work in state government that isn't always an option. To overcome this obstacle, I've been looking for inspiration and I found that E-Learning Heros has weekly challenges. These mini samples would be a great way to show off my design and engagement skills! 

2. Reflect on who I am as a professional

I took a webcast (ya'll know how much I love webinars/webcast) from ATD titled Ace the Interview. This hour long session gave such valuable advice that would make anyone stand out to potential employers for all the right reasons. 

The take away for me was to identify a unique selling point that would set me apart from the competition along with tips on how to answer basic questions from the interviewers perspective and the reason why they would ask certain questions related to my skills and background. 

This item on my list is what I'm most looking forward to because I can organize this information into an Excel spreadsheet, and the OCD side of me will be happy, happy, happy!

What professional goals do you have that scare you? Have you made a plan or written them down? Let me know by leaving a comment :) 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

You should totes follow me!

-
Image
Have you ever just been so overwhelmed with stuff? Like it's literally everywhere and won't stop piling up? That's how I initially felt when I entered my first Twitter chat today. I was just there to observe and see how it works but my goodness!! I felt like I needed to have my phone updating the feed, then have two or three desktop windows open to click on other hashtags, look at profiles, post, and another window to find GIFS because apparently that's a thing on Twitter chats... who knew? But with all things in life, I just went with the flow. I stopped worrying about EVERY post and started reading the repetitive tweeters, I'd stop at random spots to slowly scroll when the feed became too much, and of course anything that the host posted I took notice of.  While this may not be the best tactic as a chat host, because you really should be paying attention to more than a few people, it worked for me as an observer with zero experience. Eventually, I
Read more

I'm on island time!

-
Image
This week is closing to an end and I'm thinking how can I get ahead of all the responsibilities I have to complete for my summer classes?!? When will I research this, write this, or submit this?... hello time management! At work, I had this feeling of "there's never enough time" especially when Thursday rolled around. But that comes naturally when dealing with multiple project and task deadlines, right? To be honest, all I could think about throughout the week was spending time with my family to celebrate birthdays and the 4th of July. I was looking forward to waking up each morning with a beach view, a cup of coffee in hand, and the struggle of the day is what bathing suit I'd wear. Well, TODAY IS THE DAY! We made it to the island! For the next week I will relinquish all work responsibility and focus on being a student and soaking up the sun. I envision my next week being similar to working at home? Have any of you worked from home as an instructional des
Read more

Welcome to EME6414

-
Image
The time has come the walrus said... to dive into the world of Web 2.0, collaboration, social media, and social networking. From now until August, my sources of inspiration will focus on what I'm learning in my Instructional Systems and Learning Technology class at Florida State University- EME6414: Web 2.0-based Learning and Performance. I've been eager to start this class and am looking forward to posting about what I'm learning, reflecting on how it'll affect my design and development processes, and what I can do with my new found wisdom to influence how people learn, work, and use tools that foster inquiry and collaboration. Let the adventure begin and Go Noles!
Read more