HARD Goals
The Goal: The goal of HARD Goals is to begin an organized process towards a career goal. Sometimes it’s hard to wrap your head where to start, so this activity gives you step-by-step instructions on how to make a career goal into a career path.
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Materials
- Full Indigo Report
- HARD Goals worksheet (click to open)
Step 1: Students should look through their Potential Degree Matches section in the Indigo Report and highlight those that look interesting. Think about what careers might go along with these majors, and think about other careers that interest them. Write down the potential careers (around 5-10) on a piece of paper.
Step 2: Now ask students to review their Motivators and Skills sections. Based on their top two Motivators and top skills, they should eliminate all but 2-4 career options that were written down. For example, a High Traditional with a strong set of principles around family might want to stay away from a career that would keep them away from family via long hours or working weekends.
Step 3: Now, students should research their selected careers. Some online research sources are:
- O*Net Online: https://www.onetonline.org/
- Bureau of Labor Statistics: https://www.bls.gov/
- My Plan: http://www.myplan.com/majors/what-to-do-with-a-major.php
- Career One Stop: https://www.careeronestop.org/
- Careers.org: http://www.careers.org/
- Job Star Central: http://jobstar.org/tools/career/spec-car.php
- Occupational Outlook Handbook: http://www.bls.gov/ooh
- Salary.com: www.salary.com
Step 4: Give students a copy of the chart to complete. Even though the goals are called HARD goals, it should be completed in the order A, H, D, and R. This will provide a broad-to-specific approach to defining a career path.