Career Waterfalls

Career Waterfalls (hereinafter, the Lectio) is the second lesson part of the Career Endeavors lesson that introduces its participants to career projects and related topics.

WorldOpp Pipeline

This lesson belongs to the Introduction to Careers session of EmployableU Concepts.

Content

The predecessor lectio is What Career Endeavor Is.

Career waterfall

Script

In career waterfalls, the development progress is seen as flowing steadily downwards through the phases. These phases may vary, but they are planned in advance.

One's waterfall may start with discovering one's vocation. "Whom do you want to be?" and "What do you like to do most?" questions are asked either in person or through some aptitude test.

Vocation suggests one's target industry and/or occupation may come next. If parents don't have their vision for their child, the Occupational Outlook Handbook or another resources can assist.

Occupations come with particular competence; development of one's educational credentials may take years. Job search and landing one's job in the target occupation and/or target industry would end that waterfall.

Let's add some real life example; just the name is changed to preserve the privacy. Meet Lisa, who used to believe that management was her vocation. She had attended a college for 4 years to earn her Bachelor's degree, but no one wanted to hire her because of her lack of work experience. She started working as a sales representative and eventually stays in that occupation the most of her professional life. She doesn't regret about her 4 years in a college, and says that it was fun, but she has almost never used what she learned at the college.

That example is not everyone's case, and some waterfall projects can be successful, but there is no way that everything in that many-years project would go as planned and a great chunk of time -- and often money -- wouldn't be wasted.

Career waterfalls are sequential. Agile methodologies represent the opposite approach to administration of career projects. Agile career projects assume frequent adjustments that reflect the newly-discovered information.

Key terms

Career waterfall

Closing

Is the concept of career waterfall explained well? --Yes/No/I'm not sure

Agile Career Projects is the successor lectio.