Career Jumpstart! – Modules and Activities

Program staff integrate career exploration in program activities and shape the future of young New Yorkers. Example activities:

• Game Changing Career Party - Do we expect youth to carve careers if they don’t know what different careers are about? This pretend-party game helps youth think about their career interests to start a game changing career exploration journey with Holland’s code. 
• Oh, the Places I’ll Go… Career Collage -  Youth dream it, plan it, and make it happen with a career collage or vision board. Vision boards are artistic roadmaps for youth to identify and display their dreams and develop a plan, to make their dreams come to life.
• Career Values Board Game - Youth play the Work Values Board Game to learn about the importance of values and how values play an important part of their career choices. Using a game format, youth pick three occupations that fit their values of an ideal job.

Knowing what job search involves and what to expect increases youngsters’ commitment to education and preparation for the future. In addition, social media is ever-present in young lives. Understanding its effects is a necessity for success for young New Yorkers Example activities:

• Hammer Home Job Search Tools - For youth, job search becomes practical and simple with quality job search tools. Knowing is winning half the battle – when youth know about the foundational job search tools, they become more job ready!!
• KISS: Keep It Super, Simple Job Search - To youth job search seems like finding a needle in a haystack but many have searched for jobs efficiently and youth don’t have to re-invent the wheel. They can learn from the experts and elevate their job search with KISS strategies.
• Make the Job Puzzle Work - Youth learn the art and the science of putting together the puzzle to apply for a job. The puzzle pieces are the business, job description, occupational profiles, and job application. 
• My Life on a Page - Resume writing is a creative process like writing a theatre script or being an artist with words. Youth explore the introspective and creative process of fitting their life accomplishments on one page for a business!
• Pursue an Interview Theatre - Giving an interview can be daunting to a youth. Understanding the interview process and practicing with peers in theatre-style fishbowl makes the unknown process fun!
• Online Profile Plays Havoc - Youth have technology at their fingertips from early childhood. With a game of traffic lights, they learn the importance of a clean and inspiring online presence for career success.  

Essential, foundational, or soft skills are lifelong skills that businesses seek. Understanding soft skills help youth to value and learn from each life experience. Example activities:

• Fireside Chat Competitions - In a comfortable fireside-like environment youth learn from career stories of professionals with an engaging competitive game. 
• Know the Other Party to Be Career Ready - Youth tend not to know what businesses want from their entry-level employees. Youth zoom in on skills that employers seek and plan to build their skills using business hiring intel.
• Make or Break a Team Meeting - Youth are discretely assigned constructive (make) and destructive (break) team member behaviors, such as – encouraging, clowning, disrupting, judging etc. They discuss how to solve environmental problems while playing these behaviors. In the end, the group guesses the assigned roles of their peers and evaluate how these behaviors supported team’s progress.

Youth and young adults work on problem-focused peer projects of their choice that begin early in their program participation. The efforts and outcome of the peer projects are demonstrated to the staff, family, and peers at the end with a celebratory culminating event. Such start-to-finish projects led by youngsters provides an environment for them to test and build skills while receiving intermittent guidance.

Some example projects include:

• Mock interviews by peers
• Business panels on an industrial issue
• Present career vision boards
• Interview staff about their career journeys
• Career stories of famous people
• Career poetry slam
• Collage or dress up for different professions

The output product can be a presentation, artwork, poetry jam, performance, etc. on any of the career peer projects. Consistent guidance from staff facilitators, check-ins, incremental incentives and focus on strengths are indispensable for the success of such projects.

Interested in integrating the modules and activities in your youth and young adult programs?

Complete this online form to download the toolkit.  Questions can be submitted to [email protected].

Online form for
Modules & Activities