Day 2 of the Career Champions Challenge
Day 2 of the Career Champions Challenge
Welcome to Day 2 of the Career Champions Challenge! Today’s topic is on supporting students as they think about their potential career path.
How can we Support Students when they feel lost?
There’s a lot of stress and anxiety involved when students feel lost about their future career path or major. As we’ve all been there ourselves in different ways, we always want to encourage and normalize these struggles with our students. Yet, it can sometimes be hard to know what to say, so when in doubt, please refer your students to the Office of Career & Professional Development to do a “Career & Major Exploration” appointment with us anytime!
However, if your students seem to be seeking some advice, one of the first questions that typically comes to one’s mind to think through this process may be, “What do you like to do?” While it’s extremely important to know what a student’s work interests are, there are other aspects students can think about when thinking about a potential future career path or choosing a major:
- Values
- Personality
- Skills
Values
The Gen Z students of today have grown up in unprecedented times: the massive influence of AI and information overload literally at their fingertips, a worldwide pandemic, and growing global/political tensions.
With these vastly different experiences than previous generations, the way current college students think about and value careers and work in general may be a bit different. According to Handshake (2022), 70% of Gen Z students say money is the biggest factor or value that affects their employment choices. Not only is financial stability important, according to the Deloitte 2025 Gen Z and Millennial Survey, 54% of Gen Z students expressed that “meaningful work is very important” to them (pg. 4). Further, Gen Z students see the job they engage in a large part of their core identity (Deloitte, 2025, pg. 34). Students want a meaningful purpose in their future careers. Teaching or advising students on how to better understand their own values towards their future career can help shape their four years here at UAlbany. Simply asking your student, “What matters to you in a future job?” and providing examples can help them start thinking about their values.
Personality
For students to realize what their values may be also requires them to know who they are as a person and their own personality. It can sometimes be hard to be self-aware, but it’s important to help students thoughtfully reflect about what they like and dislike, how they handle different situations, how they work with others, and what kind of work environment they may want to be in.
Skills
As students start to develop an idea of what they may potentially want to do, the concept of career can often still be abstract for them on how to actually make it happen. As faculty and staff, the best way to make it concrete for them is to encourage them to start and try things out and build up their skills and experiences. Two suggestions could be through informational interviews or through experiential education.
Informational interviews or connecting with someone who has had the same major or is currently in a career of interest may sound intimidating to students. It may help to provide an explanation of the benefits of these career conversations, such as being able to hear firsthand about how others are making a direct impact in society in their own way. You could encourage the student to ask during the interview about what they can do during their four years here to obtain the skills to get into the field. This concrete framework of preparing with them on how to do an informational interview can help ease students’ anxiety of talking to someone new. For today’s resources, we’ve provided an informational interview handout that you and your students can use to understand the etiquette of how to connect with someone, and potential questions students could ask.
Upperclassmen often come into the Office Career & Professional Development feeling lost on how to even get started in getting involved. They sometimes feel they are too late for everything. Keep encouraging your students that it’s never too late to get involved and to build up different skills for their future. Take the time and show them the different offices on-campus that readily provide different experiential learning opportunities such as Education Abroad for studying abroad, The Minerva Center for research and specific internship programs, Community & Public Service Program for volunteering, and/or the Office of Career & Professional Development for internships. MyInvolvement is another great way to remind students to build skills by getting involved on-campus.
Career Assessment Tools
As we mentioned earlier, there are multiple aspects of thinking about a future career path. The Focus 2 self-assessment program looks at all of these angles, including the assessments of their values, skills, work interests, personality, and potential majors they can pursue. We will demo this tool in today’s video. After a student takes these assessments, they can schedule a “Focus 2 Results Review” appointment with a career advisor to discuss their results and to think about next steps as well. We also provide a homework assignment suggestion that you could use in your class in today’s resources.
Incorporating AI
While the Focus 2 self-assessment program can be a first step in allowing students to think about their values, skills, and personality, AI can be another way for them to reflect on career questions. Here are some prompts they could try:
- How do I find values that are important to me in a job?
- What are important values to look for in a specific company that I’m interested in?
- How do I know what is important to me when looking for a career?
- How do I find meaning in the future job that I do?
- What skills should I be gaining in college if I am interested in becoming a XXX? (profession name)
- How could I gain XXX skill(s) through studying abroad or internships or research or volunteering (pick 1)?
- What emerging careers align with my values and skills?
- X, Y, Z (value names) are very important to me. What careers could I have that are related to these values?
Gen Z students today have multi-dimensional concerns and expectations about their future careers. As faculty and staff, we want to be mindful of this. We want to support students by helping them keep discovering new perspectives about careers and majors and providing them hope for what lays ahead in their career development journey.
To answer today’s quiz successfully, please be sure to do the following:
- Read the Deloitte Global 2025 Gen Z & Millennial Survey Key Findings section (pgs. 2-4 only)
- Create a Focus 2 account using your UAlbany email and the code Damien (please feel free to put any year for your “Year of Graduation”).
You need to take all 8 quizzes to receive your certificate of completion. Thank you again for participating in the challenge. If you have any questions or comments, please contact us at career@albany.edu.
Today’s Resources
