The Role of Personal Skills and Interests

Setting the Stage

Students will understand that certain jobs require specialized skills and education. Often they don’t realize how personal skills, achievements and life/work experiences open employment doors, create opportunities for advancement, and ultimately lead to a fulfilling work life.

Material & Preparation

• Arrange for computer and internet access for students working in pairs or groups.
• Interests-Skills-Achievements-Careers reproducible [Google doc] [Word doc] [PDF] - 1 per student

What to Do

Teachers could start this lesson by leading a whole class discussion on how personal interests and skills are important in the career development process.

Teachers could ask students to think about how people end up in the jobs they do.

Teachers could ask students to suggest how personal interests and skills could help you find and keep a job.
Some things that might come up are people who like the outdoors might not be inclined to take an office job; leadership or teamwork skills you develop, as part of a sports team might be useful in a career; the skills you learn working on one job could be helpful in getting a different job. This could be a Think-Pair-Share activity followed by reporting out to the whole class.

Teachers could direct students to the Let’s Talk Science careers website and provide each with a copy of the Interests-Skills-Achievements Careers Reproducible (available in the Downloads below). Individually, in pairs or groups of three, students will find three career profiles to use as they complete the Reproducible exercise. Alternative, teachers could assign specific profiles to each group. 

If completed in pairs or groups, students could discuss their thoughts and answers to the discussion questions. The teacher could then conduct a class discussion to summarize the importance and relevance of personal skills, achievements, and experience to the career development process. 

If individual students complete this activity, they could be placed in partners to share their answers and conclusions. Again, this should be followed up with a whole class discussion.