Career Exploration

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One of the goals of Computer Challenge is to give students an idea of what happens in the professional world of the computing. A career exploration experience should be a part of your program each semester and is a requirement for each Challenge Award.

How do you find an computer professional that will provide a career exploration experience for your club? First put feelers out into your local community, especially parents. Ask your students if any of their parents or relatives work with computer engineering or information technology, get a name and phone number, and give a call. Or an acquaintance of yours or a parent may know someone who works in a computer field. Computer staffers in your school or school district aren't necessarily the best choice since students already know what goes on in schools. When you speak to a possible visitor, ask them if they like their job or not. Nothing is more disappointing to students than listening to someone complain about their work.

A great way to expose students to the real world of information technology is to take a field trip to a business. Your computer professional may be able to arrange this for you.

Or your compuer professional can visit your club. In this case, ask him or her to prepare a 30 minute presentation about a particular success story in his/her career. It could be a product development story, a major obstacle overcome or problem solved, something he or she created, satisfying an important customer, capturing a new account, a competitive win, etc. Not a raise or promotion. Ideally the success story will involve teamwork. Props, pictures, or sample products add interest.

Either way, ask your computer professional to tell the name of his/her position, tools and technologies used, personal product or service, and education requirements or previous experience needed for this job. This information satisfies the career exploration requirement for each Challenge Award.

At the end, have students fill out the form below. This helps them consolidate and reflect on what they learned. Keep the filled out forms in your club file for a semester or so.

Thinking about careers form for students.