Career Fair

I was asked to participate in a career fair at one of our high-schools today. The career I was representing is “web design”. The target audience was freshmen. They came in 3 waves of about 100 each for 20 minutes each wave – during their activity period. Each student had a list of questions, and was to interview 3 professionals, and later write an essay about one of the interviews. Below are the questions they asked, and my answers (granted, I answered it a little differently each time I asked, but you get the idea)….

1. What is a typical day like in your job? What is your favorite aspect of your job? What would you change if you could about your job?

Casual. I don’t wear a tie, but I do dress professionally. But the atmosphere is casual. Some days, I spend 4-5 hours solid in front of my computer. Other days, I may be out of my seat every twenty minutes. Pretty much if I am getting my work done, no one cares what else I’m doing.

The casualness is my favorite thing about the job; that, and the satisfaction I get from problem-solving. It feels great when you conqure the problem after sitting at your computer 4-5 hours solid!

What I would change? This would be my specific job, not my career area. Right now I’m in a regular 8-hr day slot. I’d like to see that as a 6 hour day, or a flexible schedule. Lots of people in this field work from home or whatnot; unfortunately, I’m not one of them.

2. What should I be doing now to prepare for a career in this field? What classes should I be taking and what other activities/experiences should I be pursuing?

Keyboarding! Learn to type! That is probably the single most important skill you must have.

First of all, get your hands in it. If you haven’t tried it yet, get your hands on a computer if you don’t own one, and try writing some basic HTML. See if you like it. If you do, start spending as much time with it as you can, as is healthy.

Along that line, get involved in groups. Either here at school, in the city, or even Yahoo!Groups — start mingling with people who are currently doing this sort of thing. Learn from their experience, build community bonds. Network!

As for classes, learn languages. If you can’t take a programming class, take a French class, or Spanish or German. Its all about language. I’ll talk more about that in a bit.

How will what I do academically today affect my future options?

*laughs* Okay, pretty much all of us here are expected to tell you “do well in school”. But, in truth, your grades themselves don’t matter much in this field. What is important though, is the experience you gain while in school.

Don’t go after straight A’s — the reason you do homework in highschool isn’t because you need to add 2 plus 3. Its to learn the importance of homework and independent study. Its to learn the discipline to wrestle with a difficult subject on your own time. Stuff like that.

That is a form of problem-solving, and you need plenty of that in this field. Work hard at gaining all the experience high school offers – and analyzing that experience – and straight A’s will follow on their own.

Don’t work the grade. Work the experience.

(cont’d)