In this activity, students will explore professional profiles and reflect on the profiled individuals’ traits and accomplishments, and how those traits map to each person’s current career.
This activity is designed to help students unpack their preconceived notions about what a career path should look like, and start thinking about their own career journey.
Introduce your students to the profile collection. Feel free to use the resources provided here, or others of your choosing.
Browse professional profiles:
Take 5 minutes to review one profile as an example for the class. Feel free to use the questions listed below, which model common questions used in an informational interview.
Common informational interview questions:
Invite students to choose a profile and spend a few minutes reviewing it independently. Students don’t necessarily need to choose a person working in a field they aspire to now. There is interesting information and inspiration to be gained everywhere. Direct them to the common informational interview questions to focus their attention while reviewing their profile.
Once all the students have had time to review their chosen profile, put them into small groups of three or four. In their groups, students can share what they learned with their groupmates, using the questions above to guide them.
Following the group sharing, bring the class back together to discuss:
Optional extensions:
Introduce the online resource, CareerVillage, and encourage students to post a question.
Highlight the value of continuing to explore career paths by doing informational interviews. Students can use the questions above as a guide. Together, the class may build their own profile collection as a group blog, with each student contributing at least one post.
Self-assessment: Give students the opportunity to reflect on this activity and set goals.
If you want to dig deeper into teaching interviewing skills and give your students more practice, check out
Open P-TECH’s self-paced student courses.
*Note: You'll need to register for Open P-TECH to access this content.
