How would you clarify last week's one-word statements of capabilities? [see Bolles, pp. 83-85]
How would you illustrate these capabilities?  [see portfolios, below;  see UW Geography's Careers website on portfolios]

Circulate the list of skills gained in the Geography major.
Team projects are often the source of some important capabilities:  delegation, negotiation of tasks, group process to create a plan and execute it, identifying and making use of individuals’ strengths, identifying and finding the data required for an analysis

Example:  representation as a skill
Read the Lehmann article from The New Yorker.  Note that it’s about the problems of representation.

All of you have taken Geog 360, and some of you have specialized in GIS.  From this, and from your other theoretical and empirical courses, you immediately recognize that representation is a form of argument.

Note examples in the article:  representing estates but not other housing;  British Empire in pink;  choice of projection affects relative size of continents.

Note other examples.  We know that maps are models, or simplified representations, and are thus a form of argument.  What about other types of models?

• Mathematical models (we represent a process by selecting some variables from among many)
• Verbal models (we represent when we just telling a story;  history is representation)
• Graphical models (give the example of the DJIA’s “plummet,” on a scale that goes only from 9,000 to 11,000)
• What other sorts of models (simplified representations of processes or relationships) have you studied?  (Models of development?  Hydrological models?  International trade models?  Demographic transition?)  What’s left out in each model?  What’s accentuated?  Who benefits from these omissions and accents?  How does this bring shortcomings into the model?

You can think of other, analogous ways to generate principles that you’ve learned that are more specific than “critical thinking.”
 

PORTFOLIOS

1) Remember: you are telling a story about yourself that is essentially an argument (masquerading as a representation) that you are a player, someone who is well on the way to being an insider. Key concepts:  relevance, breadth, and depth.

2) You have certain competitive advantages coming out of this department:  our reputation , our alumni network, YOUR good work in classes, YOUR relevant projects, internships outside of class

3) Provide a digest-type overview of your relevant technical skills, experience, and accomplishments, developed across the curriculum, rather individual courses

4) Provide narrated examples of your academic and professional work, broken into parts and steps, processes, and technical challenges (and their solutions):  guide the viewer to understand how these illustrate your:

• intellectual capabilities (What are the intellectual themes you want the viewer to catch?  How did you move from general question to a decision on the actual problem?)
• technical skills (make explicit what the technical challenges were)
• management experience (How did you organize your tasks and time?  How was team work negotiated and divided?  [Don't write negatively about others])

Types of portfolios
You need to decide what sort and what format of portfolio serves your purposes:

• Learning portfolio (various projects and papers, with notes about what you learned, what difficulties you overcame)
• Career portfolio:  all sorts of examples of work, awards, etc.
• Job portfolio:  tailored to a specific job that you have or want;  best examples of work, with specific capabilities mentioned.

• Web-based
• Paper-based
• Hybrid:  web based with key examples available in print

We plan to award a prize for best student portfolio (not only from this course).

We would like to compile URLs for, or examples of, each of your current portfolios;  give Rick the URL, and tell whether it is just for dissemination within this class, or whether it could be listed on a department list of students' websites?
 

IDENTIFYING  AND  GETTING  THE  EMPLOYMENT  YOU WANT

From Bolles, What Color Is Your Parachute?
There are 1 million vacancies a week in the U.S., and there are 4-5 million unemployed people.  But, the employer and the job seeker face the complicating realities of:

• Geography (can be overcome)
• Occupational specificity (can be overcome, within limits)
• Experience requirements (can be overcome)
• Identifying one another (can be overcome)
• Vetting one another (can be overcome)

How do most of us look for a job?
How do you plan to go about looking for a job?
How do people who need an employee look for good potential employees?

Employers want reliable information about the skills, capabilities, work attributes of an employee, before hiring.  How can they obtain that?

1. Observe the employee directly
2. Rely on someone else within the organization to have observed the employee
3. Rely on a close colleague (or relative, or academic advisor), with whom the employer has repeated interaction.  This way, the employer has calibrated the way the colleague or relative assesses people, and the two have an on-going relationship to maintain.
4. Pay someone to find and assess a few good, potential employees.
5. As a last resort, look at strangers, subjecting them to interviews.

1. Current employment, temporary employment, or internships with the organization:  “get your foot in the door of the organization”  Another way of looking at this:  get out of an organization you don’t want to be in, and into one you do.
2. Do good work.  Show interest in the organization.
3. Get to know people, and illustrate your strong points.
4. Seek out an employment agency.
5. If you must rely on cold resumes:  target sectors, learn their ins and outs, be able to think tactically and speak intelligently, and provide the information that the potential employer needs.

Is this the way all hiring works?

• The more basic and ubiquitous the skills, the less the need for information;  people may be hired from cold resumes, or even off the street.
• The more specialized and technical the skills, the more possibility of a “cold” applicant who can document the skills.
• The more organization-specific the skills (e.g., some management jobs), the more probability of an inside candidate.

The "creative approach"
What is Bolles’s “creative approach”?

A more accurate name might be “the active approach,” because YOU:

1. Decide what you want to do:  what skills or capabilities do you have and do you enjoy developing?
2. Decide in what context you want to pursue these capabilities:  where do you want to contribute?

Occupation (the label we give to a particular package of tasks and capabilities)
Sector (what Bolles calls “field”)
Location or locations (how much travel appeals to you?)

3. Seek out organizations in sectors you want that make use, or could make use, of this occupation in locations that you want:  don’t wait for announced vacancies.  By focusing on an occupation/sector combination, you’ll gain ability to determine what organizations need (perhaps before they’ve made that decision).