This is what most high school students request when they wish to bring real career exposure to their school: "How do we actually do a career day that is fun and worthwhile for all?" In this blog, you'll learn the step-by-step process to organize, execute, and maximize the effect of career events in your high school, and how programs like RISE Research can bridge students to professionals providing authentic career guidance through mentorship and hands-on research experience.
The truth is that career days and career fairs can change the minds of students about their futures, but only if they are well-planned and staffed by actual professionals who can give actual advice. The best events don't just introduce students to different careers, they teach students about career paths, skill sets required, and how to advance and match them with mentors and resources that will outlast a day.
What are Career Days and Career Fairs?
The decision between types is based on your objectives, space constraints, and number of student enrollment. Career days are more effective for in-depth questioning of individual areas, while career fairs are more effective in mass exposure to numerous opportunities. Best practice is a combination of both, with career fairs for mass exploration and follow-up career days for in-depth exploration of high-interest areas.
Getting Started on Planning Your Career Event
Effective career events begin with specific objectives and planned actions at least three months in advance. Start by conducting a survey of students for their career aspirations and areas of ignorance so that your event caters to actual needs and interests. This will help you determine which professionals to invite and what career areas to target in your event.
Obtain administrative assistance and clearance in advance, such as date, location, and schedule modification permission if necessary to accommodate the program. Administrative contact with the school provides you with the resources and flexibility needed to host a successful event.
Building Your Speaker and Professional Network
Identifying interesting, actual professionals is often the biggest hurdle of career event planning, but active promotion and relationship building can create a solid pool of potential speakers. Start in your immediate surroundings by reaching out to parents, local entrepreneurs, school district officials, and community organization presidents who are professionals in subjects of interest to your students.
Contact your school's alumni association because former students are often willing to return and talk about their working lives with students. Alumni speakers provide real-life advice because they were in their place and made similar decisions, thus their advice will come more naturally to current students as being within their grasp and authentic.
Reach out to local colleges and universities because they often have career services offices that have built relationships with alumni and employers who would be happy to speak at high school activities. Professional associations, chambers of commerce, and trade associations will also point you to speakers who are skilled at speaking to student audiences.
Don't miss alternative career paths and emerging industries that may not be in the initial consideration set for students. Include entrepreneurs, freelancers, nonprofit workers, and tech, healthcare, trades, and creative professionals to provide students with a variety of perspectives regarding career choices.
How RISE Research Enables Career Exploration
RISE Research offers high school students unique opportunities to learn about careers by experiencing actual research work using PhD mentors in their intended careers. Unlike the normal career events where students get only brief glimpses at different careers, RISE Research involves students in hands-on work with professionals for long periods of time, giving them intensive knowledge about research careers, academic routes, and professional growth in the targeted career.
Not only are students in RISE Research programs exposed to careers, but they actually work on research projects and acquire skills that are applicable to a vast array of working environments. Experiential learning provides students with genuine knowledge of what real day-to-day work is actually like in research professions, from problem-solving and data analysis to collaboration and presentation.
The mentorship program in RISE Research creates long-term professional relationships well beyond standard career day activities. PhD mentors share their personal career experiences, give guidance on educational prospects, and offer intelligence on industry trends and possibilities that otherwise students would not have exposure to through standard career exploration activities.
Logistics and Event Management
Brief professional volunteers with information regarding your school, students, and event goals so they can present accordingly. Provide them with presentation-length guidelines, preferred presentation format, and suggestions on how to incorporate interactivity and engagement into their presentations to engage high school students.
Develop concise signage and floor maps that guide students through the event in a productive manner, particularly in career fair models where students travel from an array of stations. You may want to develop passport-style documents that invite students to visit a specific number of booths or presentations to expose them to a range of career choices.
Maximizing Student Participation and Engagement
Have students come in with better than boilerplate job descriptions to ask about daily tasks, career paths, education and training needed, challenges and opportunities within the industry, and advice for high school students who want to enter the field. These more particular conversations yield better information than canned presentations.
Create interactive elements that incorporate student participation, such as demonstrations of proficiency, problem-solving activities, or collaborative activities that expose students to experiential learning in different types of work. These activities allow students to understand if they enjoy the intellectual processes and challenges of different professions.
Include follow-up activities that extend learning beyond the event day, e.g., exchanging contact information for students who are interested in ongoing networking, internship or job shadow, or referencing relevant programs such as RISE Research that provide extended career exploration through real professional experience.
Measuring Success and Following Up
Stay in contact with professional volunteers who have provided excellent feedback, as they are ongoing assets to your school and can be convinced to participate in future projects, mentor certain students, or provide internships. Express gratitude through thank-you letters and updates on how their contribution helped students.
Record successful aspects of your event as photographs, videos, and written descriptions, which may assist in reproducing successes and in using them as promotional materials for future events. Recordation can also be useful in training new event coordinators or when expanding your program to new schools or grade levels.
Key Takeaways for High School Students
Career event planning requires careful planning, promotion, and attention to educational as well as logistical factors, but for its influence on student awareness of careers and professional networking, the effort is worthwhile. Effective events combine wide exposure to a wide range of career opportunities with access to prolonged inquiry and ongoing contact.
Most valuable career exploration is through the vehicle of long-term connections, not brief meetings, so initiatives like RISE Research are of historic importance because they entail connecting students with mentors for multi-week research endeavors that provide students with genuine insight into professional work and career development.
Remember that career events must create curiosity and action, not just inform, and thus try to create experiences that give students a preview of how existing strengths and passion will map out to future options and encourage them to take concrete next steps in their career exploration process.
Begin Your Career Development Journey
Ready to transition from introductory career exposure to actual professional experience? RISE Research pairs high school students with PhD mentors on hands-on research projects providing real-world exposure into science, technology, medicine, and dozens of other careers while building strong credentials for college admissions.
Unlike brief career day presentations, RISE Research offers students long-term mentorship relationships where they work directly with professionals side by side on meaningful projects, gaining valuable depth of what really happens in any array of careers while developing skills that translate in many professional contexts.
If you are a high school student pushing yourself to stand out in college applications, RISE Research offers a unique opportunity to work one-on-one with mentors from top universities around the world.
Through personalized guidance and independent research projects that can lead to prestigious publications, RISE Research helps you build a standout academic profile and develop skills that set you apart. With flexible program dates and global accessibility, ambitious students can apply year-round. To learn more about eligibility, costs, and how to get started, visit RISE Research’s official website and take your college preparation to the next level!
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