Next Move, Best Move

Chapter 9How to Bring It All Together and Put It Out in the World

Career Affirmation: My personal mission and vision will positively impact the lives of others.

I'm sure you've read a lot about various career tactics and research opportunities to determine the next steps in your career strategy to ensure your next move is your best move, but now it's time to focus on putting all these things together to teach you how to deliver your best to the world. The first time I became clear about having a brand in the workplace was the first time I presented at a conference. I didn't know anything about professional development conferences until I got into career services in my first role as a career development counselor.

In this role, I worked on an assessment project with my manager to think about whether we could measure student learning in career development classes. Our university had a class that walked our students through best practices and prepared them to search for internship opportunities. The class was a pass/fail, four‐week experience that was always taught in person. Since the class was pass/fail, many students did not prioritize attendance or feel committed to completing homework assignments. Knowing this, we wanted to test teaching the class in an online environment within the same timeframe but self‐paced so students could complete the assignments when most convenient. This was a huge shift in learning for our career services team.

Fast‐forward to 2020, when much ...