Get a Job!

Core Connections

Get a Job!

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By:  Jessica Grace, Henderson County Schools

It is no secret that today's job market is highly competitive. The jobless claims are the highest they have been since the government began keeping records in 1967! What makes a candidate for a position stand out? Of course, the obvious answer is their application and resume. But, these are not all the pieces of the puzzle needed to get an interview and hopefully a job. High school students need to know how to create a career portfolio that includes a personal data sheet, resume, cover letter, and follow-up/thank you letter. Where are our students going to learn this information if we, the high school teachers, do not teach them?

There is no shortage of information floating on the web about this subject. There are even templates available in word to use to create these documents. Those who have money to burn have a great number of people vying to create these documents for them for a fee. There's an old saying, by Confucius, that says "Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you've fed him for a lifetime." By the time the average person is 30, they will have had 8 different jobs! If students leave high school with the knowledge of how to create and update a career portfolio, then they have been "taught how to fish!"

The rigor and relevance of this type of teaching lesson is hard to convey to students who have never been forced to work in a "real world" environment. The types of jobs teenagers hold, just require them to fill out an application, which most of the time is not done correctly! Most jobs that require a career portfolio to be used do not become available to high school students until they leave the educational arena and enter the "real world" of work. So, the first battle for the high school teacher is getting their students to understand the importance of this type of unit of study!

The second step in this process is finding good resources available to aid in teaching this unit. If you type the word resume in Google, you get in the neighborhood of 169,000,000 results! Some of the best resources available can be found on this website under the TICK database by searching for "career portfolio."  http://coekate.murraystate.edu/kate/tick . Other places on the web that have great information about how to create a career portfolio are Purdue University's website, The OWL at http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/564/01/ . This site will help students with not only how to write a good resume, but also the format for a business letter which will be needed for the cover letter and follow-up letter. Other helpful sites for a career portfolio are Monster ( http://career-advice.monster.com/resumes-cover-letters/careers.aspx ) and Careerbuilder.com if you can get your schools to unblock these sites!


No matter where the information comes from, it is vitally important for our young people today to know how to create a good career portfolio with the ability to update and change them on a regular basis. The importance of this information is supported by the Commonwealth of Kentucky as shown in Practical Living/Vocational Studies core content PL-HS-4.1.6 and the continued push of Individual Learning Plans. High schools should not graduate a student without the tools they need to gain a position in the career field of their choice. Maybe teaching it will help you brush up on your career portfolio as well!


Related Links

  • What do you like? - A website that lets students explore career information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Related Lesson Plans, Activities, and Classroom Resources