Student | Teen Program Outline

On Saturdays, the Seville Junior College offers a series of career planning classes to local high school and college students. Career center director Ken Easley teaches the classes. Since Ken doesn’t know ahead of time which students will be attending, he uses only self-scoring inventories that can be completed during the seminar.

Ken uses the Holland Self-Directed Search and the INSIGHT Inventory which work particularly well together.

Ken begins by stressing the objective of matching three factors that are important for career satisfaction:

1. Personality strengths
2. Career interests
3. Skills

If the first two can be aligned, then the skill component can be achieved through education and training.

The Self-Directed Search helps students explore which career areas their interests best match and identify the specific occupations that they would like to examine in detail.

Students then take the INSIGHT Inventory and work through a series of exercises and discussion activities that help then clarify what their personality strengths are and how these would be assets in particular roles.

For instance, two students may be interested in nursing. While one student may score Outgoing on the INSIGHT Inventory and the other student score Reserved, they can both be perfectly suited to the same career. Knowing their personality strength, the Outgoing student might find they prefer working in a large medical setting where there is plenty of activity and people contact. The Reserved student may prefer working in a small private clinic where there is less activity, more lab work, and opportunity to work alone.

Ken concludes the class by having the students give summary reports about what they learned about themselves and next steps they plan to take in their career decision-making.